ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates on the pitfalls of using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in historical scholarship from a more general viewpoint by delving into the philosophy of technology in connection with the philosophy of history. GIS and the computer more generally speaking is a positivistic tool because its very conception was born out of mathematical positivism. As a matter of fact, critics of GIS often point out that this software only allows mapping into Cartesian space. Historians and philosophers of technology have used this vernacular to detail the nature of human technology and how it frames social interaction and scientific work. GIS is thus the geography that is mappable, for non-Euclidean geometries are possible to construct logically, but it is impossible to visualize them. GIS and Remote Sensing have transformed the subject of geography to such an extent that large areas of the field have now turned into some kind of Geo-Informatics.
