I Map; Therefore, I Am (Isn’t That What You Meant, Descartes?)
There are lots of definitions of “human.” Here’s another: Humans are humans because they can map better and more complexly than any other kind of organism. Birds migrate; so do whales, salmon, turtles, and even horseshoe crabs. One doesn’t migrate without some type of mapping. Dogs can map a way home or to food on the other side of a fence. Obviously, animals have to map somehow, but their maps are limited to getting food, reproducing, and finding family and shelter; and their maps are used instinctively at one time or another for something necessary: go north in spring; go south in fall; run this way for safety, that way for food. Return to Capistrano or any migratory location. Humans, by contrast, map even the unnecessary, like the route to Capistrano to see the swallows return. Or even a route to Capistrano that is so indirect it includes scenery for scenery’s sake and takes an extra day to get there. It doesn’t matter what kind of map they make, physical or mental, humans map everything all the time, and they tie it to time.
Time, though secondary to place, is essential to mental mapping. We spend our lives mapping the finite world in complex relationships among brain, place, and history (culture). Beyond our “animal-like” mapping, our human mapping occurs in the context of the culture in which we dwell. To use Aristotelian terms, mapping is an essence of being human, not an accident. For Descartes, it would be proof of existence: “I map; therefore, I am.”
There are lots of definitions of “human.” Here’s another: Humans are humans because they can map better and more complexly than any other kind of organism. Birds migrate; so do whales, salmon, turtles, and even horseshoe crabs. One doesn’t migrate without some type of mapping. Dogs can map a way home or to food on the other side of a fence. Obviously, animals have to map somehow, but their maps are limited to getting food, reproducing, and finding family and shelter; and their maps are used instinctively at one time or another for something necessary: go north in spring; go south in fall; run this way for safety, that way for food. Return to Capistrano or any migratory location. Humans, by contrast, map even the unnecessary, like the route to Capistrano to see the swallows return. Or even a route to Capistrano that is so indirect it includes scenery for scenery’s sake and takes an extra day to get there. It doesn’t matter what kind of map they make, physical or mental, humans map everything all the time, and they tie it to time.
Time, though secondary to place, is essential to mental mapping. We spend our lives mapping the finite world in complex relationships among brain, place, and history (culture). Beyond our “animal-like” mapping, our human mapping occurs in the context of the culture in which we dwell. To use Aristotelian terms, mapping is an essence of being human, not an accident. For Descartes, it would be proof of existence: “I map; therefore, I am.”
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