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GIS and History: Epistemologies, Reflections, and Considerations

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History and GIS

Abstract

In March, the gypsies returned. This time they brought a telescope and a magnifying glass the size of a drum, which they exhibited as the latest discovery of the Jews of Amsterdam. They placed a gypsy woman at one end of the village and set up the telescope at the entrance of the tent. For the price of five reales, people could look into the telescope and see the gypsy woman an arm’s length away. “Science has eliminated distance,” Melquíades proclaimed. “In a short time, man will be able to see what is happening in any place in the world without leaving his own house.”

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Historically, ideas on the nature of space have been considered by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716), David Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), and Henri Lefebvre (1901–1991). Geographers such as Gunnar Olsson, Anne Buttimer, Yi-Fu Tuan, Nigel Thrift, David Harvey, Doreen Massey, and Edward Soja among others have drawn on these philosophers to inform their geographical methodologies.

  2. 2.

    The Wizard of Oz (1939) (PAL DVD, Warner Home Video, 2006) ASIN: B00005NMWB, run time: 101 min.

  3. 3.

    For a comprehensive discussion, see Cope and Elwood (2009).

  4. 4.

    I attribute this to my mentor and colleague Professor Emeritus Richard Scott of Rowan University.

  5. 5.

    Ian Gregory, lecture notes, Geospatial Methods for Humanities Research workshop, Digital Humanities Observatory Summer School, Royal Irish Academy, Trinity College, Summer 2010.

  6. 6.

    For a more detailed discussion, see Travis (2010).

  7. 7.

    P. Kavanagh, “I Had a Future” (1952) in Kavanagh (2005, 261–262).

  8. 8.

    For a further discussion of “qualculativeness,” please see Thrift (2008, 582, 604).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College, University of Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Charles Travis

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  1. Charles Travis
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Correspondence to Charles Travis .

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  1. , Department of Geography, University of Portsmouth, Lion Terrace, Buckingham Building, Portsmouth, PO1 3HE, United Kingdom

    Alexander von Lünen

  2. , Trinity College, University of Dublin, Trinity Long Room Hub, Dublin, Ireland

    Charles Travis

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Travis, C. (2013). GIS and History: Epistemologies, Reflections, and Considerations. In: von Lünen, A., Travis, C. (eds) History and GIS. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5009-8_12

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