Status Updates From When Maps Become the World

This is one of those books that gets you to stand outside of yourself and how you see the world. It's really prying open doors for me to think about how abstractions relate to the world, and errors that we make when we use those abstractions. It's not light reading, but will pay dividends in close study and analysis.

Discussing maps in the context of math, science, history, etc. For example, "Gaddis suggests that the historian is like a cartographer. Historical narrative is like a map...both “distill the experiences of others”; are purpo-
sive; involve “pattern recognition”; require generalization and abstraction; are not complete replications; and are premised on “selectivity,” “simultaneity,” and “scale.”

Chapter 2 includes an excellent discussion of analogical reasoning and how it can lead to hypotheses for future testing.