To make maps that work, we must depict categories using methods that match the structures of human mental categorization. - Alan MacEachren

It may be that the human brain not only perceives but stores the essentials of a visual scene using the same geometrical, quasi-symbolic, minimalist vocabulary found in maps.

The representational nature of maps, however, is often ignored – what we see when looking at a map is not the word, but an abstract representation that we find convenient to use in place of the world. When we build these abstract representations we are not revealing knowledge as much as are creating it.

Maps have been a successful form of representation for centuries by making the world understandable through systematic abstraction that retains the iconicity of space depicting space. Advances in methods and technologies are blurring the lines among maps and other forms of visual representation and pushing the bounds of “map” as a concept toward both more realistic and more abstract depiction. As a result, there are a variety of unanswered questions about the attributes and implications of “maps.”