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The geographic eye: Seeing through GIS? 1
Author(s) -
DOWNS ROGER M
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
transactions in gis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.721
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9671
pISSN - 1361-1682
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9671.1997.tb00019.x
Subject(s) - geographer , geographic information system , geography , cartography , geographic coordinate system , function (biology) , gis and public health , data science , computer science , evolutionary biology , biology
Vermeer's sixteenth‐century painting ‘The Geographer’ captures the geographer in the act of doing geography, but looking up and away from a map. As professional geographers, many of us now do geography ‘through’ geographic information systems. We too need to look up from the screen in order to understand the act of thinking geographically. With such an understanding, we can design geographic information systems that are both developmentally appropriate and that support the development of the geographic eye. This paper offers a first approximation to a description of the structure and function of the geographic eye whose operation can be supported by a geographic information system.