At the 27th International Conference on the History of Cartography (ICHC) in Belo Horizonte, Brazil some years ago, I presented a talk entitled "Indigenous Mapping: Culture Creates Cartography". A short time later, I gave an updated talk on this subject, with the title "Indigenous Mapping: Cultural and Psychological Sources" to the Washington Map Society, followed by a written treatment in their journal, The Portolan .

This was all part of my on-going research on indigenous knowledge systems, with a focus on the underlying psychological framework that produces them. This investigation defines “scientific thinking” as an analytic and systematic way of observing and interacting with the world. “Analytic” in this context means examining evidence, and constructing models of the world based on that evidence. This practice requires a well-developed apparatus, and in the West, this has a long history, dating back to the ancient Greeks — who also laid the foundations of scientific cartography through the work of Ptolemy, for example. The methods of analysis, of looking at evidence, and creating categories of knowledge, came to be more refined over time, especially during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, with cartography providing clear evidence of this path.

By contrast, what characterizes non-scientific, indigenous cultures is — rather derisively — called “magical thinking”, a belief in structures beyond observable physical reality. Magical thinking rejects what Westerners would label evidential processes, and does not employ Western scientific analysis. Rather, indigenous thinking relies on holistic ideas — relationships based on similar patterns, homomorphism, and so on.

My research explains how apparently non-scientific thinking (i.e., non-analytic thinking) can nonetheless create sophisticated maps and broader systems of knowledge, with parallels in other traditional systems, such as indigenous medicine. These investigations also explore how this holistic, indigenous thinking still exists deep within the human psyche and may reflect how we truly perceive the world around us.

This investion, I believe, is useful well beyond the academic realm. I feel that understanding this “dual” aspect of human nature can also serve as a vital consulting tool in examining the function — and dysfunction — of organizations and institutions around the world.

Sources for my research include the ideas of Julian Jaynes, Carl Jung, George Steiner, Paul Feyerabend, Bruno Latour, and many others in the fields of ethnography, psychology, sociology, philosophy of science, and history.