ABSTRACT
In 1938 two new terms entered the literature. Both were modern neologisms derived from Greek etymologies, and both were coined to describe geographic distributions. Both were proposed by senior and well-respected figures within their fields and both terms are still in popular usage today. Yet these terms indicate very different modes of thought concerning space, and ultimately questions of mapping, governance, and the biopolitics of race. In one case, the word “choropleth,” which was coined by J.K. Wright (Wright 1938), President of the American Geographical Society (AGS), the term entered the geographical and cartographical literature immediately. It describes the most popular form of thematic mapping and GIS practiced today, in which geographically bounded regions are created. The second term is “cline,” which was coined by Sir Julian Huxley (Huxley 1938) a British evolutionary biologist, first Director of UNESCO, and President of the British Eugenics Society, to refer to the gradual and continuous geographical variation of species, and more generally any continuous spatial variation. This term is well known in disciplines such as biology and anthropology, but has almost no presence in human geographic or cartography.
