A deflationary approach to fundamental principles in GIScience

While the practice of mapping has ancient, even prehistoric, roots, the past fifty years have seen increased emphasis on the sciences of geographic information. A key element is moving from the fixation with the specific constraints of the mapped product (the graphic artifact) to re-centering attention on databases as the resources for constructing all potential maps, and the GIS as the basis for all models of process of change. There is an early indication of this approach enunciated in a short (threepage) article by John Sherman and Waldo Tobler in Professional Geographer (Sherman and Tobler 1957; Chrisman 1997a). This was followed by a work on the promise of digital technology (Tobler 1959). Perhaps one of the clearest articulations in the rethinking of cartography was Board's (1967) "Maps as Models".