Spatial Thinking and External Representation

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Spatial thinking plays a central role in the life of individuals
as well as whole societies. It ranges from everyday orientation
in our living environment to the social organization of place and
space and the structuring of a huge corpus of experiential
knowledge by means of theoretical concepts in modern science.
Spatial knowledge thereby takes on different forms in different
contexts, and it does so depending on the spatial experiences
accounted for and the available means for its external
representation. From this perspective, scientific spatial
knowledge is but one form of spatial knowledge and does not
represent a Stratum independent from non-scientific knowledge.
This volume presents and analyses manifestations of spatial
thinking in various societal and historical circumstances: in the
language and practices of recent non-literate societies, in the
administrative institutions of early civilizations, in discursive
contexts of ancient Greece and China, in early modern natural
philosophy and metaphysics, and in twentieth-century physics. It
discusses the historical and structural relations of the
different forms of spatial knowledge and thereby attempts to
address the question of the epistemic status of this knowledge.
The series Studies of the Max Planck Research Library for the
History and Development of Knowledge is dedicated to key subjects
in the history and development of knowledge, bringing together
perspectives from different fields and combining source-based
empirical research with theoretically guided approaches. Studies
typically present working group volumes with integrative
approaches. The volumes are available both as print-on-demand
books and as open-access publications on the Internet. The
material is freely accessible online at www.edition-open-access.de.