What is Mapology?

Mapology may be the most advanced Theory of knowledge or Map of maps so far (Map 2005 ff.). This may also mean: a mapological shift or "mapological turn" in the end... (*)

____ Akutobhayâ

1. "I" am a map-maker.
2. Sentence 1 as a visual map may become a linguistic map (etc.) within an English-reading map-maker, e.g., the reader of this paper (i.e., “You”?).
3. Maps are more or less stable – or: "pre-stabilized" – biases.
4. "My whole world" is made up of maps, and of shifts between and within maps. This "discovery" of "me" being a map-maker (and being ABLE to play skillfully with maps) can also be called "consciousness". And in fact, there may never be any "fact", "act", "interaction", "navigation", "theory", "system", "pattern", "network", "model", and space without any map & map-maker...
5. There may be a lot of ever MORE different(iated) local (i.e., always selective & "selected" & "methodically biased"...) maps, which may mutually map & modify & extend each other within an ever more global (potential?) landscape:
   visual maps, auditory maps, body maps, oculomotor maps, tactile maps, gustatory maps, odor maps, vestibular maps, tool maps ("mapping tools") … linguistic maps (including "translations", i.e., the mapping of one language onto another within an individual bilingual map-maker...), historical maps, juridical maps, economic maps, political maps, “sociological” maps, ethological maps, biogeochemical maps (of networks of interactions), physical maps (including blueprints, diagrams, voxel maps, probability maps, electron density maps, etc.), mathematical maps (including "functions", i.e., "map(ping)s" => see also Mathematik), cartographic maps, empathetic (“social”) map-maker maps, mapological maps (“theories of sciences”), etc.
   And here is the point where some "mapping fallacy" & "ontological fallacy" & "ontological bias" may come in: a linguistic map (e.g., the word “apple”) may not map some ’ontological object’ or ’matter’ or 'truth' or 'stable thing' (i.e., apple?) at all, but may ‘only’ map (or: “refer to”) OTHER maps (e.g., to some visual, gustatory, odor, and/or tactile maps). Accordingly, there may be no such thing as a "map of maps", but only a shift from one (local...) map to another map...
   
6. "My Self" consists of all activABLE – and: mappABLE? controllABLE? – maps, i.e., my Self is the more or less smooth “Potential landscape” of all activABLE maps. These maps may also be called playing-cards (in German: “Spielkarten”).
7. There also seem to be maps and shifts that CAN NOT be activated or "self-initiated" – nor co-controlled – within my Self. These (thus) "contingent" maps may be called Umwelt or Not-Self. This contingency or NON-controllABILITY may thus critically depend on some non-predictABLE "feedback" from some seemingly "outside world". And this "contingent uncertainty" may also be one stimulation (i.e., “reason”) for a shift to scientific and religious (i.e., seemingly hyperstable'" and "absolute-total") maps, games, methods, biases, and detours: e.g., while seeking (more or less methodically...) for some "evolutionary-historical causes", "big bangs", "first movers", "first causes", and "explanations" within a "religious bias" and perhaps already biological-infantile bias, i.e., "the search for stability & balance & homeostasis & truth", and the "reduction of mis-matches & uncertainties & unpredictable shifts (including some "unknown hour of death")"...
8. Emotions are shifts.
9. Volition is a shift or tension-tendency to a target map, i.e., a shift to an activABLE map, which may be “chosen” (selected, anticipated, expected, predicted, “tended-to”) out of several OTHER “POSSibilities” or maps within a “POTENTIAL landscape” containing myriads of such POSSIBLE “tendencies-tensions” and possible shifts from maps to maps...
10. Some shifts – between maps, within maps, or to maps – may be discrete (i.e., more or less “abrupt”), or MORE or less continuous-contiguous (i.e., “blurred”). Thus, maps may mutually map each other in a MORE or less continuous-contiguous-coherent – and hence more or less stable – fashion. Hence, maps may be MORE or less stable or “hard-wired” – as in the case of "prior beliefs" or "biases" (i.e. already "pre-stabilized" maps)…
11. Emotional shifts that are mapped may (thus) become feelings, i.e., “conscious” emotions, which may then be mapped and co-controlled further by linguistic maps (i.e., "linguistic detours") in turn, e.g., by words like “envy”, “jealousy”, “hate”, etc. One of the perhaps most crucial feelings is the feeling of a "mis-match" or "conflict" (e.g., between two maps that may "feed back" and map (on-)to each other...). Besides, contingent mis-matches and feedbacks may also be methodically & voluntarily produced and pursued by some "critical scientific-technical" methods ("investigations", "tortures").
12. Maps that are mapped in turn (e.g., by OTHER maps) may (thus) become conscious, too.
13. There may be activABLE maps that CAN be mapped in addition (“explicit memory”).
14. There may be activABLE maps that CAN NOT be mapped further (“implicit memory”).
15. Different(iated) maps may map or co-control (or: “inhibit”?) each other mutually within a map-maker (and within some “to-be-balanced” static-dynamic “Potential landscape”?).
16. Some maps & shifts may even become “methodical” detours, and thus "co-controls" with regard to OTHER maps & shifts.
17. The POSSIBILITY of a map-maker to co-control “its own” games, maps & shifts by OTHER (different) maps, playing-cards, and detours (shifts) may be called Self-control = maps mapping maps, i.e., the mutual co-control of maps within a map-maker or Self.
18. The MORE differentiated the maps within a map-maker, and (thus) the MORE POSSIBLE detours this map-maker may POSSESS, the MORE “sensitive”, “RICH”, and capABLE of Self-control (and perhaps also: body-control) such a map-maker may be (via some "Self-critical feedback and mutual mappings").
19. Empathy is the “social hypothesis” (i.e., the map) according to which “other” bodies than just “my body” may also be ABLE to make maps, i.e., a map-maker’s hypothesis that there may be "OTHER” map-makerS or “SelVES” than just “I” or “my Self”.
    This pseudo-symmetric (mirroring) mapping of map-maker features or SelVES onto “other” bodies ("similar" body maps), and this fatal intermingling of ("similar") bodies and SelVES (i.e., this "social fallacy" or "social bias") may be extremely dangerous in some daily “social practice” (i.e., "social simulations" and "mind games"), as in “social” feelings or "idola fori" like “envy”, “jealousy”, “hate”, "death", “we”, “humans”, “our society”, “we Germans”, “the Jews”, “the Americans”, “the capitalists”, “females”, “males”, “children”, “parents”, or in “socio-politic-economic” and “game-theoretic” maps in general.
    But there are neither some "Jews" nor some "Aryans" nor some "Germans" nor some “Afroamericans”, but only bodies (or perhaps individidual genomes) that may all "struggle" for some "stability" (with individual strategies to perpetuate themselves, i.e., their bodies, their Selves, or their maps), i.e., that may all "want" to be sustained & "understood" (vulgo: "to be loved")...
20. Some maps may be fictitious carrots (i.e., fallacies...) that stimulate the (PRO-)CREATION of maps, i.e., the production & extension & expansion of ever MORE maps and biases... For example: the “idea” (i.e., the map) or "fallacy" of some “History” – i.e., the "historical bias" – may be a fictitious carrot (or: some pretext) fuelling the (pro-)creation of ever MORE historical maps (or: texts, or: stories) via historical methods (detours), including detours and contingent “mirrors” like visual maps (e.g., “paintings”, “sculptures”, “books”, “films”) or linguistic maps (e.g., “textual (re-)sources”, "archives", "libraries"). Accordingly, there may be no "History" at all, but only stories (or historical maps) told by more or less "intelligent" (i.e., more or less "rich") story-tellers (i.e., map-makers).
21. Esthetic and technical (& scientific) methods may consist of Self-stimulating (& systematic) playings (games) with contingent and non-contingent maps & shifts within a map-maker. For example, musical artists ("musicians") play with auditory (etc.) shifts (& maps) and try to expand & extend & refine these maps ever MORE... And: the "best" (and mostly anonymous) artists have never looked for money nor social recognition nor sexual display, but only for "absolute beauty and perfection", i.e., for some "total stability" – e.g., by tapping into the most stable attractors or "neural maps" of some generally not very sensitive nor "conscious" onlookers (via some very stable "material works or art").
22. Philosophical methods may consist of some Self-s(t)imulating (and: Self-critical? "introspective?") playing with (seemingly?) non-contingent maps & shifts within a map-maker, that means: shifting around with my maps within some "simulational mode" or "day-dreaming" or "default-mode" for the sake of generating & extending & expanding ever MORE possibilities & possible maps (i.e., "new ideas")...
23. Within neurobiological maps, the linguistic term “map-maker” may be replaced by the linguistic map “brain” or “nervous system”, and the word “map” may be replaced by “neural map” (i.e., “neural activity pattern”). However, strictly (mapologically) speaking, it is neither some “brain” nor some “State” nor some “Society” that CAN “feel”, but only a map-maker.
24. Within neuro-computational maps, the term “map-maker” may be replaced by “POTENTIAL landscape” (see also Potential landscapes), and the terms “maps” and “shifts” may be replaced by ("static"? "pre-stabilized"? "temporarily stabilized"?) “attractors” (or: “attractor landscapes”) and "dynamic" “trajectories” (or: "transients") respectively. Out of such a dynamic “Potential landscape” virtually (potentially...) containing myriads of superposed and permanently shifting “attractor landscapes”, only a few POSSibilities or maps or “states” may actually be “active” or “realized” or “retrieved” or “reached” or “attained” in this very moment (“here and now”).
25. Within evolutionary-biological maps, there may be the “primordial idea” of “GROWTH” and "generation/promotion of life", i.e., the idea of a “shift to some ever MORE & ever BETTER & ever MORE predictABLE”: e.g., the shift to ever MORE neural synapses, neural maps, cancer cells, bodies (“propagation”, “replication”, "procreation"), mathematical maps (which may have become the most stable and historically most successful maps – and, via computers, perhaps the strongest "social" norms as well), paintings, songs, riches, and money, or to ever MORE (Self-stimulating, Self-simulating…) and ever MORE differentiated maps and co-controls, i.e., ever BETTER mappings of some Self, SelVES, body maps, and contingent “Umwelt”...
    Accordingly, maps – i.e., historically stabilized "biases" and temporarily stabilized "prior beliefs" that can still be modified and adapted – do never have to be 'ontologically' or "eternally" "true"; they only have to be "good" (i.e., "fitting" or "stable") enough for some rather ARBITRARY and short-living "survival" and "replication" of ever MORE bodies (or genes, publications, papers, texts, books, or WHATever)... Similarly, "scientific" maps and (experimental) mappings by so-called "scientists" do not have to be "true", either (i.e., they can even be afflicted with systematic errors – who knows?), because they only have to "function" within functional (i.e., non-stochastic, systematic-technical-experimental, methodical & social) "circuits" & "networks".
    Besides, maps may be the most potent "weapons" (especially within "newly developed" linguistic mind games and mutual mappings between members of a hyper-social H. sapiens...).
    The "historical emergence" of (temporary and provisional...) "stabilities" and stabilizations (i.e., "evolutionary selections") within cyclically sustained functional circuits and dynamic equilibria on all levels – including some genomic "(in-)stability" ("mutations"), stability of protein foldings & biomolecular signalling pathways, stabilized neural maps (vulgo: "memories" & "biases"), personal longevity, stable population networks (vulgo: "societies"), stable art historical "styles", "evolutionarily stable (game) strategies", stability of financial markets, "stable social relationships" (vulgo: "trust"), "stable personality traits & predictable behaviours" – may ONLY be a "simple" (or: Self-organizing?) consequence of all those "blind" growths & mutual mappings & mutual (historical) stabilizations mentioned above... And: "variability begets stability", i.e.: there is no stability without any (shifting...) variability (at least in some "nature"). Besides, "consciousness" was perhaps the only single innovation in H. sapiens: by having become "conscious" (i.e., knowing about my own maps, and playing with my own maps, mostly via INDIRECT artificial and rather technical detours like art, education and science), H. sapiens may have become the "best" map-maker (i.e., the best player with maps) and hence was able to enlarge & expand its universe and territories ever MORE... (but which may not preclude the possibility that H. sapiens will one day become extinct because "we" have not been able to map all asteroids...).
     
26. Not all map-makerS may be “damned” to make maps – and some few map-makers may already have become "aware of" (i.e., have been able to map) the problem of maps (and the problem of stability) on all levels...
     
27. And those who will have the “best” (i.e., the most stable?) maps...

(Oliver Elbs, April 2005 ff.)
Keywords: map-maker, map, mapping, shift, stability

(*) A similar text like the one above has already been published in my short book entitled "MAP 2020" (Munich, 2006) — see Publications — but I know that no body has read all this at all...