Thinking in maps: from the Lascaux caves to knowledge graphs

The practice of writing down one’s thoughts and notes to help make sense of the world has a long legacy. For centuries, artists and intellectuals from Leonardo da Vinci to Virginia Woolf, from John Locke to Octavia Butler, have recorded the ideas they found most interesting in a book they carried around with them, known as a “commonplace book.”

les cartes en sont venues à être utilisées non seulement pour représenter d’immenses régions de la Terre ou du ciel, mais aussi pour exprimer des idées – plan de bataille, analyse de la propagation d’une épidémie, prévisions démographiques. « Le processus intellectuel par lequel le vécu dans l’espace est transformé en abstraction de l’espace

A map, in other words, is an arrangement of symbols into a system of meaning — and we use maps because we understand the language of signs that undergirds them. If the mapping of space was a human invention, she explained, one could also invent a means of mapping time. 

The semantic system of graphical relations The graphical expression of semantic relations