Review: the iGIS app for iPhone

Please Note: Geometry IT is offering free copies of its iGIS app to reviewers. The author of this review has not participated in said opportunity and payed the full price for the iGIS software, unbeholden to anyone except his own recent “software review” addiction.

In December 2009, I upgraded to an iPhone. I quickly discovered the dark heart of commercialism which lurks at the heart of the Apple business model – location aware advertising, i.e. advertisements placed within free apps which target you based on your geographic location, a practice which has gotten so bad Apple is taking measures to curtail it. This is downright terrifying when you first notice it, despite the fact that all current generation cellphones are locatable for EMS purposes. Despite its faults, however, the iPhone and similar generation mobile phones have an enormous potential to substantially alter the way we work and play with GPS devices. To name but one example, there are a number of apps which compile position and velocity data for traffic monitoring purposes. These apps turn every iPhone into a probe vehicle, which is used to monitor traffic and provide realtime updates of traffic flows at virtually no cost, something DOT planners have previously spent millions to accomplish.

I have been particularly interested in altering my own iPhone to increase its GIS/GPS functionality. Put simply, the iPhone is a lot of hardware for a very small price. Currently, the 3G processor carriers a 412mhz processor, with 128MB ram and 8 gigs storage. Performance wise, this is on par with the computational processors in a top of the line handheld unit like the GeoXH. Even the GPS unit in the $99 3G – which is the worst code-phase receiver since the bad ole days of selective availability – is no real hindrance to turning the iPhone into a killer GIS/GPS platform. You can easily overcome the accuracy issues by “jailbreaking” your iPhone and installing GPSSerial. This allows you to use an external GPS unit in your apps, via NMEA strings. Better still would be roqyGPS and a Bluetooth/DGPS capable receiver, allowing you to stream data into the integrated Bluetooth controller in the iPhone. In other words, wireless 1-10m CEP GPS and a touchscreen handheld, all for a total cost of less than $200! Throw in a service contract with AT&T, and you can even broadcast said data across the internet in real-time, anywhere you receive 3G coverage. With these sorts of modifications, the iPhone could become a real asset for cheap research, especially among graduate students looking to do a pilot study sans grant money.

Unfortunately, a major obstacle to transforming an iPhone into a data gathering monster has been the nature of iPhone development. Developers have been much more interested in writing yet another “Boobs!” app (of which there are hundreds), rather than exploiting the potential of the iPhone hardware.

Until now, that is. Enter Geometry IT, which has developed the iGIS application, available for a mere $20. iGIS is “the first GIS for the iPhone”, and (as a total and complete nerd) I simply had to purchase the app.

After downloading, the first thing I noticed about iGIS is the large and intuitive interface. This is no small feat in the world of GIS, where the GUIs frequently pushes the boundaries of the esoteric.

Undoubtedly, the strongest feature in iGIS is the ability to work directly with the ESRI shapefile format directly within your iPhone. Data format conversion is a major headache for GIS professionals and requires a serious attention to detail if it is to be done properly; improper conversions between formats can seriously degrade the accuracy of your data if not done precisely according to form. Moreover, even said conversion is done properly, the attribute data lurking behind each feature is often lost or attenuated. So shapefile support, on the iPhone no less, is a feat in and of itself.

To begin, I selected six data layers from the FGDL to import into iGIS. These layers ranged in both the type of feature they represented (points, lines, polygons) and the scale at which they covered (county or state). I also paid attention to the number of features within each layer, and selected several layers with a large number of records in an attempt to push iGIS to the breaking point. Below is a summary list of the files that I chose:

• Tallahassee Springs (37 point records, 3 counties)
• County Boundaries (67 polygon records, statewide)
• Springs (589 point records, statewide)
• Public Lands (1860 polygon records, statewide)
• Leon Water Bodies (4457 polygon records, 1 county)
• Leon County Roads (19042 line records, 1 county)

Uploading these files to iGIS proved to be extremely straightforward. Opening the import screen brings up the instructions for connecting to iGIS via a WiFi network, which is required in order to get your data into iGIS. The browser front end is handled by a JAVA interface which allows you to select a number of files and upload them as a batch.

After you select your layers, but prior to uploading your files, you need to associate a projection with each layer. At this point, iGIS revealed an outstanding feature: a comprehensive EPSG projection library. If you’ve never worked with EPSG codes before, let’s just say the EPSG library is gargantuan and attempts to encompass every projection known to man. Apparently, iGIS has some facility to detect the coordinate system used by shapefiles, although I received 5 successive error messages telling me that this automatic detection failed. This was not an issue, in any event – I prefer to set the coordinate system manually to ensure that it is done correctly. More to the point, any user ambitious (and geeky) enough to pay $20 for a GIS app will probably be aware of the issues surrounding coordinate systems, and where to find said information in the metadata.

The import process revealed the first bug in the iGIS software. Despite repeated attempts, the Public Lands layer for the state of Florida failed to transfer successfully. Throughout my exploration of iGIS, I encountered several instances where iGIS failed outright, either crashing or failing to display a layer correctly. Most of these failures seem reflect an inability to deal with small scale shapefiles, i.e. shapefiles which extend over a wide geographic area, rather than layers with a large number of records (more on this in a moment).

After importation, layers are managed via the project menu. After creating a new project, you select the layers you wish to utilize in your map. There is also a rather nice “zoom scale” feature, where you set the scale at which each layer becomes visible. This is an important consideration, given the limited processing ability of the iPhone, and the ability to determine the scale at which each layer becomes visible is a definite ease on processing time. You can also choose which layer works with the interactive map tool.

Within the project menu, you can also customize the basic symbology of the each layer. Unfortunately, the options for customization are quite limited, allowing you to alter only the size, color, and transparency of each feature. There is no option for using custom symbol sets, so your choices are limited to circles and lines of varying sizes and colors. Also lacking is the ability to assign different symbols based on the data based on the attributes of your data. For example, it would be nice to be able to assign larger symbols for springs with a magnitude of 1, slightly smaller symbols for springs with a magnitude of 2, etc. Similarly, the ability to display roads differently based on their class (divided highway, 2 lane, etc.) is missing as well. Admittedly, you can utilize ArcMAP or another desktop GIS to create a shapefile for each “class” of symbols and import each of these layers into iGIS, but a greater control over the symbology within iGIS would be quite useful, particularly when you have numerous features coded by ID numbers.

After setting up your project, you can proceed with opening the map window. The map window is extremely visually pleasing – the basemap is drawn from Google Earth, with the Google watermark is clearly visible in the lower lefthand corner – and generally consists of 1 meter, cloud free images for densely settle areas. I did notice that sparsely populated areas have the “patchy” look characteristic of lower resolution imagery, but did not investigate the extent of these areas in any detail. Zooming in is handled by the conventional double tap or “reverse pinch”. Oddly enough, however, triple tapping is missing as a shortcut to zoom out; only the “normal pinch” works for this.

iGIS successfully displayed the county layers quickly and accurately, regardless of the number of features each layer contained. (Layer visibility is easily quickly handled from the map window.) Quite frankly, I thought my iPhone would choke on the 4,000+ polygons in the water layer, not to mention the 19,042 line segments in the roads layer, but in this instance, I was pleasantly surprised – iGIS ran both layers simultaneously with no problems, and required only a few seconds to redraw each time the map was altered. I’ve actually seen much slower performance out of ArcGIS running on an older machine. All features closely matched the basemap imagery, particularly the Tallahassee Springs layer, all of which were on target (I’ve actually visited most of these springs). The roads layer was slightly imprecise, but quite frankly, this was probably the fault of the original shapefile, not iGIS.

iGIS also features a simple to use identify tool. After tapping the identify button, a red circle with a fixed diameter appears on the screen (relative to the size of the screen, not the scale of the map). When you tap the screen again, iGIS brings up a menu listing all of the features within the diameter of the tool, and by clicking on the appropriate feature you can view all of the attribute data of the feature at hand. The only major problem with this tool is swapping the layer which the tool is identifying. In order to change the layer associated with the tool, you have to exit back to the main screen and enter the projects menu. This problem is doubly compounded by the lack of spatial bookmarks in the mapping window, requiring you to repeatedly zoom back into your area of interest. This same problem exists if you want to change the symbology of your layer as well – exit map, enter project menu, exit project menu, enter map, zoom, zoom, zoom…. The end result is tedious, to say the least, and at times turns the inherent pleasure of using a touch screen GIS into a frustrating, repetitive exercise. Better would be a “settings” menu, accessible from map window via one button, where you can change these setting without leaving the map.

Other than the organizational problems with the iGIS menus, it wasn’t until I attempted to display the statewide layers that iGIS began to have serious problems – gagging, then choking, and eventually completely asphyxiating my iPhone. You should be aware that iGIS is entirely unable to deal with data that has the spatial extent of, say, a US state. This was first noticeable when I attempted to display the 590 spring locations for all of Florida. Frustratingly enough, the springs are clearly visible in their proper location when viewing the map at a small scale (i.e., zoomed out). One double tap to zoom in later, however, and 90% of the points disappear from the map. Where did they go? Not even the identify tool knows – it acts as if the layer isn’t there at all, despite the layer being marked as present and visible by iGIS.

The statewide county polygons were even worse. Eight consecutive attempts to load this layer resulted in iGIS crashing, sending me back out to the main iPhone menu. The ninth attempt resulted in a total freeze of my iPhone, requiring me to turn the phone off completely and reboot.

The final feature I wish to discuss is the ability to annotate your maps with your own data. Currently, you can add point locations within iGIS, which allows you to specify the name of each data point and any comments associated with it. This layer can then be exported to the shapefile format. The attribute table within this shapefile contains a column for names, a column for your comments, and a column giving the timestamp for each point that you have created.

While this is a nice feature, it leaves quite a lot to be desired. The first problem with this function is that it repeatedly crashed the iGIS app. This needs to be fixed, as the lack of spatial bookmarks requires you to restart the app and repeatedly zoom in to you AOI yet again. More importantly, however, the ability to create attributed shapefiles in situ is a defining task of portable GIS software – other than the accuracy of a carrier-phase receiver, this type of functionality is what you pay out the nose for when you purchase a Trimble handheld. One comment box per point is simply too limited. Many observations require multiple measurements, represented in individual columns within the attribute table. In order to take multiple observations at the same location in iGIS, however, you need to create multiple points at the same measurement, or record multiple measurements within one column of attributes – both of which create major headaches in sorting out your data properly after you export to a shapefile. More importantly, iGIS completely lacks the ability to create lines or polygons – both of which are necessary for certain types of data. If iGIS is serious about being a portable GIS platform, and not just a buggy Google Earth clone, this feature needs to be expanded substantially.

Finally, iGIS lack support for raster data formats. (The basemap is, again, standard Google Earth imagery, which looks very nice and works well.) The lack of support for raster imagery is not unsurprising, as raster data is much more computationally heavy than vector data. Given that processing raster files taxes my quad-core desktop to its limits, this is a feature we shouldn’t expect to see any time soon, and it is in no way detrimental to the iGIS software.

The Quick and Dirty Summation:
iGIS is well worth the $20 price of admission for a single reason – the ability to import and accurately project attributed shapefiles in your iPhone. Without reservation, iGIS is cheap relative to other portable GIS solutions, and the ability to create attributed point data, exportable to directly to the shapefile format, is a feature that (to my knowledge) is only found on professional handheld units. Relative to other commercial GIS software, which ranges from $1,000-10,000, iGIS is a steal at $20.  Ultimately, however, you get what you pay for, and iGIS is prone to crashes, unable to handle statewide data sets, lacks in functionality, and has an overly awkward menu system. These problems are all the more frustrating because they are largely overshadowed by the unbridled potential for iGIS to become a comprehensive GIS solution for handhelds, whether for work or for play.

The Good

• Ability to import shapefiles directly into your iPhone
• Ability to create points with attribute data, and export these as shapefiles
• Exhaustive EPSG projection library
• High Resolution (1m) basemap
• Quick rendering Time
• Self-evident interface
• Extremely easy file transfers

The Bad

• Repeated Crashes
• Compete inability to handle data over a wide geographic extent
• Menu system becomes very tedious
• Lack of spatial bookmarks
• No support for line or polygon drawing
• Creation of attribute data is limited to a single column

A Wishlist of Features in the Next Version

• Spatial Bookmarks!
• Spatial Bookmarks!
• Spatial Bookmarks!
• Access to the symbology and identify settings from the map window
• Expanded symbology set, including custom symbols and qualitative/quantitative scaling
• Ability to create lines and polygons
• “Add attribute” button when creating features, allowing you create another attribute field for a single feature; alternately (even better), the ability to define a class of features, which have a user specified number of attributes.

Virilio’s “Open Sky”

It is possible to at once project love, amazement, and disgust at Virilio’s (1997/2008) Open Sky; Virilio is entertaining enough that he excites the extremes of all the emotions one feels upon reading an engaging text. Take, for example:

“If the interval of time (positive sign) and the interval of space (negative sign) have laid out the geography and history of the world through the geometric design of agrarian areas (fragmentation into lots of land) and urban areas (the cadastral system), the organization of calendars and the measurement of time (clocks) have also presided over a vast chronopolitical regulation of human societies. The very recent of emergence of an interval of the third type thus signals a sudden qualitative leap, a profound mutation in the relationship between man and his surroundings.

Time (duration) and space (extension) are now inconceivable without light (limit-speed), the cosmological constant of the speed of light, an absolute philosophical contingency that supersedes, in Einstein’s wake, the absolute character till then accorde to space and time by Newton and many others before him” (Virilio 1997/2008: 13).

which draws on a body of philosophy dealing with the nature of space and time (it is with this literature that I am deeply enmeshed in preperation for section 3 of my doctoral comps). First, the associations between time-positive and space-negative come directly from Einstein’s general relativity, in that “the equations that define space-time as a four dimensional continuum (for example c²t² – x² – y² – z² = 1), the three spatial co-ordinates x, y and z are subtractive when the temporal co-ordinate t is additive and vice versa” (Murphy 1999: 68). The practical ramifications of this equation are easily explored with the use of a spacetime diagram:

Here, time is represented by the vertical Y axis, and space by the horizontal X-axis. The speed of light (v=c) is denoted by the dotted red line, which proceeds at 45° from both axes. If your velocity is less than the speed of light – v<c – then your movement occurs in the upper 45º of the graph. This is called a timelike path, and is the path that normal matter assumes in the spacetime of relativity. Contra, a velocity  greater than the speed of light (v>c) gives rise to a spacelike path, which is the path that timetravelers and tachyons follow. The dotted red line itself is a lightlike path or null path. Ray (1991) explains:

In the spacetimes of the STR [special theory of relativity] and The General Theory of Relativity (GTR), we may connect any two points geometrically by timelike, null, or spacelike paths… When a timelike path connects two points, a signal travelling at less than the speed of light may  pass continuously from one point to the other. When a null path connects two points, only a signal travelling at the speed of light may pass between them. The notion of causality in relativity is tied to the idea of light being the fastest possible causal signal between two points. [...] So the ‘light cone’ of an event C may be thought of as the cone of possible causal influence – C may be regarded as a physical cause of any event within or on the lightcone” (Ray 1991: 60).

This is perhaps more easily visualized when space in generalized to two, rather than one, dimensions:

where anything lying outside of the “future light cone” of the observer is thus, by definition, incapable of causually influencing the observer in the future. Put another way, if nothing can move faster than the speed of light, then only objects that lie within the spacetime bounded by the speed of light relative to the observer (i.e., the future light cone which expands as time progresses) can causually influence the observer.  Tachyons, or any other object following a spacelike path, violate the law of causality and the vectored 1-dimensionality of normal time, giving rise to the paradoxes of time-travel.

Ray goes on to note that “the laws of STR do not legislate against particles travelling faster than light. The key idea behind STR is the invariance rather than the limiting character of the speed of light” (1991: 61). This, of course, strikes to the heart of Virilio’s second point quoted above, that “the cosmological constant of the speed of light, an absolute philosophical contingency that supersedes, in Einstein’s wake, the absolute character till then accorde to space and time by Newton and many others before him”. The absolute space and absolute time of Newton were transformed by Einstein – not into relative spaces and relative times – but an absolute spacetime denoted by the universal invariance of the speed of light. Speed, after all, is denoted in meters per second or some other such notation – understandable only in the relationship between space and time. Where the speed of light is fixed, so too space and time.

Virilio ties this exposition of spacetime back into modern human existence with the following:

“The exposure time of the photographic plate is thus simply the exposure of time, of the space-time of its photosensitive matter, to the light of speed, that is, ultimately, to the frequency of the photon carrier wave. [...] These days, the screen of real-time televised broadcasts is no longer a monochromatic filter like the one familiar to photographers which lets through a single color only of the spectrum, but a monochronic filter which allows a glimpse only of the present. An intensive present, spawned by the limit-speed of electromagnetic waves and no longer registered in chronological time – past-present-future – but in chronoscopic time: underexposed-exposed-overexposed” (Virilio 1997/2008: 28).

Interesting, no?

Enough meditation on the ontology of spacetime (although I could go on, bringing in Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey and “the vast chronopolitical regulation of human societies”). What else is interesting in Virilio? What about this gem:

“Historically, we thus find ourselves faced with a sort of great divide in knowing how to be in the world: on the one hand, there  is the original nomad for whom the journey, the being’s trajectory, are dominant. On the other, there is the sedentary man for whom subject and object prevail, movement towards the immovable, the inert, characterizing the sedentary urban ‘civilian’ in contrast to the ‘warrior’ nomad.

A movement that is today intensifying due to remote control and long-distance telepresence technologies that will soon land us in the ultimate state of sedentariness where real-time environmental control will take over from the development of the real space of the territory.

Terminal – and final – sedentarization; a practical consequence of the emergence of a third and final horizon of indirect visibility (after the apparent and deep horizon): a transapparent horizon spawned by telecommunications, that opens up the incredible possibility of a ‘civilization of forgetting’, a live (live-coverage) society that has no future and no past, since it has no extension and no duration, a society intensely present here and there at once – in otherwords, telepresent to the whole world” (Virilio 1997/2008: 25)

And another, discussing the same theme:

“Once more we are seeing a reversal in trends: where the motorization of transport and information once caused a general mobilization of populations, swept up into the exodus of work and then of leisure, instantaneous transmission tools cause the reverse: a growing intertia; television and especially remote control action no longer requiring people to be mobile, but merely to be mobile on the spot” (Virilio 1997/2008: 20)

Meditate on that, if you will. As Virilio succintly notes: “Service or servitude, that is the question” (Virilio 1997/2008: 20).

Melancholic Biunivocality

Began the day by mulling over Deleuze and Guatarri’s exposition of ‘biunivocal relationships’ in a suitable state of melancholy. Recall the deification of genus Homarus:

“God is a lobster, or a double pincer, a double bind. Not only do strata come at least in pairs, but in a different way each stratum is double (it itself has several layers). Each stratum exhibits phenomena constitutive of double articulation. Articulate twice, B-A, BA. [...] Both articulations establish binary relations between their respective segments. But between the segments of one articulation and the segments of the other there are biunivocal relationships obeying far more complex laws” [ATP 40-41].

Double articulation, then, is the process by which strata become stratified. But what does it mean to say this relationship is ‘biunivocal’?  Mark Bonta and John Protevil’s (2004) exegises, normally enligtening, is of no help; their Deluzoguattarian glossary (a paradoxical project, I realize) lacks an entry for ‘Biunivocal’. Other entries on related topics -  ‘Strata’, ‘Stratification’ and ”Faciality’ – likewise fail to mention bunivocality. What, then,  is this thing, this biunivocality?

Reading ‘biunivocal’ from within the complex associational matrix of the English language – ‘biunivocal’ itself is Massumi’s word choice, after all – is itself a Deluezoguatarrian expedition of and…and…and. ‘Univocal’, according to the OED:

A. adj.

1. a. Of symptoms, signs, etc.: Indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing; certain or unmistakable in significance. Chiefly Med. Obs.

b. Of terms, etc.: Having only one proper meaning or signification; admitting or capable of a single interpretation or explanation; of which the meaning is unmistakable; unambiguous.
Opposed to EQUIVOCAL a. 2. Now esp. in Logic.

c. Mus. (See quot.) Obs. rare⁰.

2. Uniform, homogeneous; not exhibiting variation or deviation; confined to one kind or nature.
Freq. in the latter half of the 17th c., esp. in the writings of Jeremy Taylor; in some instances it is difficult to determine the precise sense.

3. Of or belonging to, characteristic of, things of the same name or species; esp. in univocal generation, normal or regular generation between male and female members of the same species. Obs.

b. Of actions, causes, etc. Obs.

4. Made, uttered, etc., with or as if with one voice. Of consent, etc.: Unanimous. Obs.

In what sense then, biunivocality in ATP? All of the above, of course.  Each strata is univocal: indicative of, signifying, or denoting one thing having only one proper meaning or signification; homogeneous through the process of overcoding; of or belonging to things of the same name or species (e.g., the inorganic, organic, or alloplastic strata); of actions and causes in the sense that collectively strata are “actualized systems with homogenized components operating at or near equilibrium/steady state/stability” (Bonta and Protevi 2004: 150); and made and uttered with or as if with one voice, which quite nicely captures the associated ideas of multiplicity, overcoding, homogenaity, vocality, and resonance all at once. Thus, the biunivocal relationship between two voices – each articulating its own univocal monophony – produces a biunivocal polyphonic texture which is emergent in character. The nomenclature ‘BIunivocal’ then, is a recognition of the importance of interaction in producing complex emergent effects/behavior.  One wonders, of course, if this reading holds true in the original french [The quasi-musical metaphor of biunivocality has strong tie-ins to the music of Steve Reich - a paper which I intend to write one day, but will not discuss at length here].

Melancholy intrudes in the imagery of biunivocal: two who are speaking, but not listening. Two people talking past each other, as it were. Undoubtedly this is a reflection of the English language, within which the notion of asymetric reciprocal interactions is difficult to express – witness ‘asymetric reciprocal interaction’ – but nevertheless, biunivocality says nothing about whether the other is listening or not. It posits only the act of vocality itself, but not receiving, decoding, interpreting. At its strictest interpretation, biunivocality posits no understanding, no reaction, no interaction, only independent articulation. [Note that this strict interpretation is exactly opposite the one intended by Deleuze and Guattari]

Guattari passed away in 1992, near Bloise, a town 185 km southwest of Paris – of what, neither Brittanica, nor Wikipedia, nor several other internet sources disclose. Undoubtedly, this is because Guattari is often overlooked as a necessary univocal composite of the biunivocal Deleuze and Guattari. Deleuze simply gets all the attention, a fact of which he was well aware. After Guattari embarked on his last line of flight, Deleuze wrote a short article in the Winter Chimeres (1992-93) entitled ‘For Felix’, in which he wrote, not “about the books we wrote together, but about the books he [Guattari] wrote on his own” (Deleuze 2006: 382). Deleuze’s short piece concludes:

“Felix’s work is waiting to be discovered or rediscovered. That is one of the best ways to keep Felix alive. Perhaps the most painful aspects of remembering a dead friend are the gestures and glances that still reach us, that still come to us long after he is gone. Felix’s work gives new substance to these gestures and glances, like a new object capable of transmitting their power” (Deleuze 2006: 383).

Three years later, Deleuze commited suicide. A heavy smoker incapacitated by lung cancer, he had recently undergone the removal of a lung and a tracheotomy. “Chained like a dog” to his oxygen machine (Goodchild 1996), unable to speak, and unable to bear the chronic, tumorous pain, Deleuze chose to self-defenestrate from his Paris apartment rather than languish in agony. Jacques Derrida (1995) wrote an elegiac memorial to the great man in Tympanum, poignantly entitled ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Derrida’s article is at once heartrending and cathartic, sprinkled with personal remembrance and philosophical engagements wthi Deleuze’s life.  Derrida’s conclusion is particularly melancholy:

“I will continue to begin again to read Gilles Deleuze in order to learn, and I’ll have to wander alone in this long conversation that we were supposed to have together” (Derrida 1995).

Only Derrida’s voice echoes back from the halls of the dead, a lone monophony lost in a still, quite place of solitude.

Bonta, Mark and Protevi, John. 2004. Deleuze and Geophilosophy: A Guide and Glossary. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Deleuze, Gilles. 2006. Two regimes of Madness: Text and Interviews 1975 – 1995. New York: Semiotext(e).

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. translated by Brian Massumi.

Derrida, Jacques. 1995. ‘I’ll have to wander all alone’. Tympanum 1, http://www.usc.edu/dept/comp-lit/tympanum/1/derrida.html; accessed 07.02.09

Goodchild, P. 1996. Deleuze and Guattari: An Introduction to the Politics of Desire. London: Sage

Geosophy Defined

“Geosophy … is the study of geographical knowledge from any or all points of view. It is to geography what historiography is to history; it deals with the nature and expression of geographical knowledge both past and present—with what Whittlesey has called ‘man’s sense of [terrestrial] space’. Thus it extends far beyond the core area of scientific geographical knowledge or of geographical knowledge as otherwise systematized by geographers. Taking into account the whole peripheral realm, it covers the geographical ideas, both true and false, of all manner of people—not only geographers, but farmers and fishermen, business executives and poets, novelists and painters, Bedouins and Hottentots—and for this reason it necessarily has to do in large degree with subjective conceptions.”

Wright, J.K. 1947. Terrae Incognitae: The Place of Imagination in Geography Annals of the Association of American Geographers 37: 1–15.