EXEMPLU DE DIVERSE TIPURI DE CITAT (IN PARAGRAF SI IN AFARA

PARAGRAFULUI)
Oxford style (note de subsol)
Before actually looking at the impact of geography and its language on Bacon’s image of
the advancement of learning, one more point needs to be made. Even if there are numerous
cultural historians and geographers who are eager to highlight the role of geography in the
instauration of a new scientific tradition, there are others such as Daniel Rosenberg, Brian V.
Ogilvie that point to similar changes in the work of Renaissance naturalists whose natural
histories were faced with major taxonomic challenges as the world has opened up and ancient
texts provided insufficient information.1 The qualitative and quantitative shift toward empirical
study had a major impact on the re-organisation of data according to the principle of similarity
and the identification of types.
At first sight, such conclusions may render the claims concerning the instrumentality of
geography in the reformation of knowledge relative, yet, that does not change the fact that at a
time when the language of discoveries had gained popularity, Bacon resorted to it quite often
with reference to his new image of learning. Perhaps, the best answer concerning the impact of
geography on Bacon’s intended reforms is to be found in his work:

To circle the earth, as the heavenly bodies do, was not done or enterprised till these later times: and
therefore these times may justly bear in their word, not only plus ultra, in precedence of the ancient non
ultra […]. And this proficience in navigation and discoveries may plant also an expectation of the further
proficience and augmentation of all sciences; because it may seem they are ordained by God to be coevals,
that is, to meet in one age. For so the prophet Daniel speaking of the latter times foretelleth, Plurimi
transibunt, et multiplex erit scientia: [many shall pass to and fro, and knowledge shall be multiplied] as if
the openness and through passage of the world and the increase of knowledge were appointed to be in the
same ages; as we see it is already performed in great part; the learning of these later times not much giving
place to the former two periods or returns of learning, the one of the Grecians, the other of the Romans. 2

In the aforementioned passage from Book II of the Advancement of Learning, Bacon identifies
geographic progress in particular as an incentive to scientific progress in general. The religious
overtones cannot be ignored for they can be traced in other works as well and seem indicative of
1
Brian W. Ogilvie, “The many books of nature: Renaissance naturalists and information overload” in JHI, Vol. 64
(N. 1), Jan 2003, pp.29-41
2
Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, Book II, p. 340
a millenarian program underpinning the entire reformation of science. Man shall thus be restored
to his paradisiacal state and his enterprises will be “after the manner of heaven” or, as phrased in
Valerius Terminus of the Interpretation of Nature, “it is a restitution and reinvesting (in great
part) of man to the sovereignty and power (for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures
by their true name e shall again command them) which he had in his first state of creation”.3
Such restoration can be achieved not by trying to pry into God’s secrets and mysteries, but by
imitating the Creator of all things in His goodness, which spells the moral aims of Bacon’s
scientific project. Travel is perceived as a catalyst for a commerce of ideas, which, in its first
stages, involves direct observation and data collection. The first chapter of Valerius Terminus
includes a passage almost identical to the one from The Advancement of Learning: “for my
understanding it is not violent to the letter, and safe now after the event, so to interpret that place
in the prophecy of Daniel where speaking of the latter times it is said, Many shall pass to and fro,
and science shall be increased; as if the opening of the world by navigation and commerce and
the further discovery of knowledge should meet in one time or age.”4 Further on, Bacon moves
from the word of God to the language of discovery and exploration and inverts the value of “old”
and “new” while predicting that if “the new-found world of land was no greater addition to the
ancient continent than there remaineth at this day a world of inventions and sciences unknown,
having respect to those that are known, with this difference”, “the ancient regions of knowledge
will seem as barbarous compared with the new, as the new regions of people seem barbarous
compared to many of the old.”5 In Book II of his Advancement of Learning, Bacon mentions
Ortelius when comparing theoretical and practical knowledge. At this point, it would be perhaps
worth taking a look at some of the ideas that underpin the work of the famous cartographer,
Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570).

3
Francis Bacon, Valerius Terminus of the interpretation of Nature, p. 222
4
Ibid., p. 221
5
Ibid., p. 223
MLA style (citat in text intre paranteze: autor pagina)

The trouble with the possible definitions of a map surges even when we deal with what might
be deemed as the simplest criterion: etymology. For even at the etymological level, the terms
designating the concept of map and their history render the task rather difficult. Among the terms
selected for discussion, we count chart, map, pinax, periodos, tabula, orbis terrarum, forma
orbis, naqshah, imago, description (Jacob 18-210). Despite the conceptual vacuum that Chrisitan
Jacob denounces with regard to maps, we dare say that we are faced with a conceptual ambiguity
doubled by a terminological overflow that the historical uses of the aforementioned terms
suggest. Namely, the equivocal references of carte, which originates in the late Latin carta, itself
coming from the Greek chartès, can be narrowed down in Russian (karta), Italian (carta) and
English (chart).
As for the English map, it has its origins in the Latin mappa, “designating a tablecloth and
also the piece of cloth that was thrown into the Roman circus to signal the beginning of public
games” (18). Around 821, the term mappa mundi began to be used “in a nearly exclusive way for
more than five centuries as the name of any kind of maps, along with texts having a geographical
content” (Gautier-Dalché 92-93). What it retained from its etymon was the idea of extent, for it
usually designated large-scale cartographic representations that were meant to be hung on walls
and used for instruction. It was only in the later Middle Ages that the mappaemundi gained their
independence from manuscript books, in which they appeared as illustrations to the text
(Woodward 1: 286-287). Significantly, they emerged as a visual ‘table of contents’ of the text,
which is why they appeared on “the first or second page of a codex” (286). The mappaemundi
can be compared to cognitive maps drawn up on the basis of religious texts whose words they
communicated visually for clear reasons of illiteracy. Although we are not going to discuss the
role of illustrations in medieval manuscripts, the function of medieval maps of this type cannot
be understood without taking into account social and linguistic aspects such as the prevalence of
the oral word in medieval culture and the role of pictures among the illiterate. In other words, the
study of the etymology and terminology associated with medieval mappaemundi cannot but treat
maps as both cultural products and “an element of material culture” (Cosgrove, Mappings 9).
The use of the term mappaemundi reveals that it is either comprehensive or metaphorical in
its sense. On the one hand, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it is used indiscriminately
to refer to any world map, including portolans, so that “in a contract for world maps at Barcelona
in 1399-1400, the terms mapamundi or mappamondi and carta da navigare or charte da
navichare were all used interchangeably” (Woodward 287). Unlike classical Latin terms such as
figura and orbis terrarum descriptio, or medieval Latin terms such as imago mundi or tabula,
mappamundi develops in the metaphorical sense which veers from a ”graphic description of the
world” to a ”verbal description” of it (287). However, from the Ebstorf map we learn that "A
map is called a figure, whence a mappa mundi is a figure of the world” (287). Further study of
the inscriptions on the map reveals that it was conceived of as a guide for travellers and a record
of the most pleasing sights to be encountered on a voyage (309). The conclusion that they were
tables of memory and icons of power seems to rely on their large size and opinions such as that
of Hugh of Saint Victor, who, in 1126, conceives of them as aids in memorising events (290).
Yet, there is little doubt that the most striking feature of medieval mappaemundi such as the
Ebstorf and Hereford maps is their intent to represent a religious narrative and a body of myths
about the known and the unknown world which they superimpose onto the territory. They may
easily be relied upon to confirm Jacob’s claim that ”a map is not a mimetic image, but an
analogical image, the product of an abstraction that interprets the landscape and makes it
intelligible by translating the profusion of what can be observed into a dynamic order of
contiguities and relationships” (Jacob 23). Moreover, in the Middle Ages it is quite easy to trace
such conceptual load in the Christian maps attached to the Gospels or hung on walls as a
reminder of Old and New Testament facts overimposed on the face of the medieval world.
The Greek terms pinax and periodos contain more information that will prove crucial in
the attempt to define maps, delineate their scope and identify their functions. Thus, apart from its
geographical reference, pinax also designated a writing tablet, a “visual medium,” what we might
call a “table of memory,” a surface on which things are inscribed lest they should be forgotten
(Jacob 18).

The word pinax, as defined by later authors, could mean a wooden panel used for writing inscriptions or
painting portraits, landscapes, or maps. Herodotus, on the other hand, speaks of a bronze tablet (pinax) with
an engraving of the circuit (periodos) of the whole earth with all the rivers and seas that Aristagoras of
Miletus took with him when he went to Greece about 500 B.C. in search of allies against the Persians.
Herodotus's reference is important in showing that maps could be engraved on portable bronze tablets, that
 general maps of the inhabited world were frequently made in Ionia, and that they were more informative
than the simple geometric plans such as the Babylonian clay tablet of the same era. (Aujac 134-135)

Whereas pinax designates the medium of representation, periodos refers to the object of
representation, to a voyage around the world which is seen as a whole. Thus, it encloses
“intellectual and methodological” connotations that the Greek pinax and its Latin counterpart
tabula fail to convey while orbis terrarum and forma orbis preserve them by means of the idea
of circularity and totality (Jacob 19).