--[ XREF INTRO

'On Exactitude in Science' is a short story written by Borges and even though it
might appear simple enough, the concept within have been influential across
generations. One main example is the treatise Simulacra and Simulation by Jean
Baudrillard.


--[ On Exactitude in Science

Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew Hurley.

…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of
a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire,
the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer
satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size
was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The
following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their
Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some
Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and
Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of
that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other
Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

(Suarez Miranda,Viajes devarones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658)


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