Apr 3, 2026 11:44 PM
When the map exactly replicates the territory in all its aspects and details, it replaces the territory--becoming a new territory we wander lost in because there is no longer any map for it.
"… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."
– Jorge Luis Borges: On_Exactitude_in_Science (1946)
"On Exactitude in Science", or "On Rigor in Science" (Spanish: "Del rigor en la ciencia"), is a one-paragraph short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
The story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658", describes an empire where cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. Later generations come to disregard the map, however, and as it decays, so does the land and society beneath it...
....."On Exactitude in Science" elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."[4]
"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.
"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About six inches to the mile."
"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I enquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."---From Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Chapter XI, London, 1893
Italian writer Umberto Eco expanded upon the theme, quoting the story as the epigraph for his short story "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1", collected in his How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays.[4][5]
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard cited "On Exactitude in Science" as a predecessor to his concept of hyperreality in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation.[6]
James C. Scott's book Seeing Like a State includes an epigraph quoting "On Exactitude in Science" but attributing the quote to the fictional writer Suárez Miranda rather than to Borges."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science
"Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars, between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose, matter yearning for meaning on a planet capable of trees and tenderness, a world on which every living thing abides by the same dumb resilience through which we rose from the oceans to compose the Benedictus and to build the bomb.
All of our models and our maps, all of our poems and our love songs, all the conjectures chalked on the blackboard of the mind in theorems and scriptures, spring from the same elemental restlessness to locate ourselves in the cosmos of being, to know reality and to know ourselves. Across the abyss between one consciousness and another, between one frame of reference and another, we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions.."---Maria Popova
"… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography."
– Jorge Luis Borges: On_Exactitude_in_Science (1946)
"On Exactitude in Science", or "On Rigor in Science" (Spanish: "Del rigor en la ciencia"), is a one-paragraph short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
The story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658", describes an empire where cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. Later generations come to disregard the map, however, and as it decays, so does the land and society beneath it...
....."On Exactitude in Science" elaborates on a concept in Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded: a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."[4]
"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.
"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About six inches to the mile."
"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I enquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."---From Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, Chapter XI, London, 1893
Italian writer Umberto Eco expanded upon the theme, quoting the story as the epigraph for his short story "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1", collected in his How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays.[4][5]
French philosopher Jean Baudrillard cited "On Exactitude in Science" as a predecessor to his concept of hyperreality in his 1981 treatise Simulacra and Simulation.[6]
James C. Scott's book Seeing Like a State includes an epigraph quoting "On Exactitude in Science" but attributing the quote to the fictional writer Suárez Miranda rather than to Borges."---- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Exactitude_in_Science
"Between the scale of atoms and the scale of stars, between the time of mayflies and the time of mountains, we exist as proteins lit up with purpose, matter yearning for meaning on a planet capable of trees and tenderness, a world on which every living thing abides by the same dumb resilience through which we rose from the oceans to compose the Benedictus and to build the bomb.
All of our models and our maps, all of our poems and our love songs, all the conjectures chalked on the blackboard of the mind in theorems and scriptures, spring from the same elemental restlessness to locate ourselves in the cosmos of being, to know reality and to know ourselves. Across the abyss between one consciousness and another, between one frame of reference and another, we go on searching for an organizing principle to fathom the ultimate questions.."---Maria Popova