Mapping Knowledge Across Time: Seven Books that Visualized the World

What patterns do we use to represent knowledge of the world? Opening seven books side by side, Mapping Knowledge Across Time asks these difficult questions. What shapes do we use to represent creation? What do we record and what do we ignore when we map the world? How do we create a picture of the past on the page? Where do we locate the future? How do the parts of the world connect? How do these shapes and patterns arranged on book pages compare across eight centuries? What do the visualizations of knowledge from these books help us see today?

The result is a tour of the information design patterns from Modernist diagrams of evolution to medieval Islamic maps, from Chinese representations of rivers to Jewish diagrams of astrological cycles. Each chapter flows back and forth between centuries and cultures, interweaving cartography with data visualization, atlases with encyclopedias. Examples unfold from these seven extraordinary book masterpieces, drawn by illuminators, carved into woodblocks, printed from copperplate, cut and pasted onto boards, demonstrating how designers drive a picture of the world into the reader’s mind. The result exposes entire visual systems that continue to inspire designers today.

This book will lead you to new ways of seeing connections between the past and the present. You will encounter maps, books, diagrams, data visualization, and global views of our common world that will surprise and inspire the general reader and the specialist.