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Abstract
Critique of Cartographic Reason explores the philosophical and epistemological limits of humanity’s drive to represent the world through maps. Beginning with Borges’ allegory of the perfect 1:1 map and Umberto Eco’s logical critique of total representation, the essay traces the evolution of spatial thought through the concepts of territory, landscape, and map. It shows how cartography, far from being neutral, embodies political power, cultural meaning, and cognitive abstraction. The analysis identifies three major crises of cartographic reason—globalization, which internalizes mapping as a behavioral logic; space exploration, which overturns terrestrial orientation; and digital virtuality, which dissolves spatial boundaries and renders the world unmappable. In the digital age, the essay argues for a renewed, interpretive cartography—one that privileges navigation, experience, and meaning over exhaustive representation, transforming mapping into a dynamic act of exploration within hybrid physical and informational spaces, where practices like digital tourism exemplify new ways of traversing and interpreting the world through virtual journeys and symbolic geographies.