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    Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet
    Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet
    Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet
    Ebook269 pages5 hours

    Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet

    By K. Maria D. Lane

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    One of the first maps of Mars, published by an Italian astronomer in 1877, with its pattern of canals, fueled belief in intelligent life forms on the distant red planet—a hope that continued into the 1960s. Although the Martian canals have long since been dismissed as a famous error in the history of science, K. Maria D. Lane argues that there was nothing accidental about these early interpretations. Indeed, she argues, the construction of Mars as an incomprehensibly complex and engineered world both reflected and challenged dominant geopolitical themes during a time of major cultural, intellectual, political, and economic transition in the Western world.

    Geographies of Mars telescopes in on a critical period in the development of the geographical imagination, when European imperialism was at its zenith and American expansionism had begun in earnest. Astronomers working in the new observatories of the American Southwest or in the remote heights of the South American Andes were inspired, Lane finds, by their own physical surroundings and used representations of the Earth’s arid landscapes to establish credibility for their observations of Mars. With this simple shift to the geographer’s point of view, Lane deftly explains some of the most perplexing stances on Mars taken by familiar protagonists such as Percival Lowell, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Lester Frank Ward. 

    A highly original exploration of geography’s spatial dimensions at the beginning of the twentieth century, Geographies of Mars offers a new view of the mapping of far-off worlds.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateDec 15, 2010
    ISBN9780226470795
    Geographies of Mars: Seeing and Knowing the Red Planet

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    • 4/5
      This is an excellent book, I only gave it the 4 instead of 5 stars, because the illustrations could have been better (colour) and possibly it is too academic for a general audience. The writer has a good prose style, readable and precise.The book is about how a geography of the planet Mars was constructed by astronomers of the late 19th and early 20th century. Using telescopes they tried to map surface features on the planet, including the famous network of canals - which turned out not to exist! There was also quite a bit of speculation about life on Mars (as there still is of course).The wider cultural context is covered, with how astronomer Lowell courted the popular press, and how science fiction writers, such as H.G. Wells were influenced and took part in the scientific debates.The book might well be a good start for anyone interested in current thoughts on the philosophy of geography, as some of these ideas are discussed and there are bibliographic references.You won't learn much about Mars itself from this book, but you will learn something of how science and society interact.

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