ABSTRACT
The increasing geometricality of mapping during the early modern era was a major part of the attempts by 'mathematical practitioners' to apply mathematics to all walks of life. Several county surveyors in England and Wales added meridians and parallels to their county maps, but their relation to the chorography remained only approximate and unconnected to the actual survey work. After 1500, European mapping practices acquired a new, geometrical aspect. Those practices increasingly configured the world's features as sets of points, lines, and shapes that are then graphically and intellectually manipulated independently of the Earth itself. This geometricality is a primary support of the conviction that modern cartography is properly a single, logical, and 'scientific' endeavour. Yet the geometricality of European mapping was not uniformly implemented. Different scales of mapping and map functions entailed three markedly different forms of geometry: cosmographical, Euclidean, and Cartesian.
