32 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
32 lines
1.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: On Exactitude in Science
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tags:
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- exclude-from-word-count
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- type/media
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author: Jorge Luis Borges
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translator: Andrew Hurley
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year: 1946
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---
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# On Exactitude in Science
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...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection
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that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City,
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and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province.
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In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied,
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and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire
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whose size was that of the Empire,
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and which coincided point for point with it.
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The following Generations,
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who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been,
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saw that that vast Map was Useless,
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and not without some Pitilessness was it,
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that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters.
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In the Deserts of the West, still today,
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there are Tattered Ruins of that Map,
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inhabited by Animals and Beggars;
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in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.
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---Suarez Miranda,
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_Viajes de varones prudentes_, Libro IV, Cap. XLV,
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Lérida, 1658
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