EXCERPT My interest in the content of cartography began with an interest in botany. I was interested in the distribution of plant species, where they were present, and how their presence and abundance could be understood as an expression of the uneven spatial distribution of inorganic resources upon the surface of the planet, for example the availability of mineral nutrients, water, or sunlight. So I started to become more interested in maps as an explicatory technique, as the epistemological tool that was available to understand the topological relationships between these inorganic features and the plant communities that they made possible…