Thinking about The Ghost Map

Some basic facts about Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map

1. (198-99) The map Dr. John Snow produced (to support his idea that cholera was transmitted by water) did not have a crucial or decisive impact on the debate. The fact is that opinion shifted only gradually to Snow's opinion.
   
   
   
   1. The stature of the map grew retrospectively
   
   
   2. The map was more important as proof of an idea once it had been widely accepted than as evidence which caused a change in public opinion


2. (67) Johnson sees Dr. Snow as a clear example of a researcher able to bridge different fields of science, a researcher with a rare and unusual perspective to bring to bear to a specific problem
   
1. (195) Johnson sees the great virtue of Snow's map as being the combination of the upper-level order of the map with the lower-level knowledge brought about by street-level knowledge and investigation


2. (220-221) Johnson views new online maps as capable of bringing about the same combination of digital maps with street-level, street-smart content
   

The difficulty is perhaps that the character of knowledge that Dr. Snow possesses
(2a) involves being able to see outside the boundaries of ordinary street-level knowledge, but the maps that Johnson imagines involve a mobilization of a democratic street-level knowledge (2b), and therefore could produce only an image of popular opinion, which in 1854 would have been the wrong idea

The Treasure Island Map

Certain books need to have maps. An obvious example is Stevenson's Treasure Island, because, as the author tells us in "My First book--'Treasure Island'", the story originated in the map. He drew the map during a period of his life when he would occasionally paint.

On one of these occasions I made the map of an island; it was elabourately and (I thought) beautifully coloured; the shape of it took my fancy beyond expression; it contained harbours that pleased me like sonnets; and with the unconsciousness of the predestined, I ticketed my performance "Treasure Island." (xii)

Only later, he tells us, "as I pored upon my map of 'Treasure Island,' the future characters of the book began to appear there visibly among imaginary woods" (xii).
I have always been disappointed by the copies of Stevenson's Treasure Island I have owned because they always had inadequate versions of the map or no map at all. The version I have used for these quotations, for example, (The Novels and Tales of Robert Louis Stevenson published 1904 by Scribner. Found through Google Book Search) does not have a map, although it contains Stevenson's essay (as preface) which discusses the importance of the map.

The connection between publishers and the map is a complex one. Stevenson tells us that the original map was lost by the publisher. Stevenson created a replacement map, "But somehow," he tells us, "it was never 'Treasure Island' to me" (xviii).
For Stevenson, the map of Treasure Island was a tool for imaginative discovery. To map the island was to create a space within which some people could be imagined moving and acting. A map of this sort creates a stage enabling a particular type of action. In addition, it establishes a particular scope or set of boundaries in which events have or will take place.

Because of the simbiotic relationship of the map and the words in the creation of the work, the book cannot be complete without the map. To be immersed in the world of the book involves encountering and studying the map. Certainly I felt this way when I first read the book.

The full map, of which the thumbnail above is a part, is the version I would choose for my edition of the book.