The term cosmography has two distinct meanings: traditionally it has been the

protoscience __NOTOC__ In the philosophy of science, there are several definitions of protoscience. Its simplest meaning (most closely reflecting its roots of '' proto-'' + ''science'') involves the earliest eras of the history of science, when the scientific m ...

of mapping the general features of the

cosmos The cosmos (, ) is another name for the Universe. Using the word ''cosmos'' implies viewing the universe as a complex and orderly system or entity. The cosmos, and understandings of the reasons for its existence and significance, are studied in ...

heaven Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the belie ...

and

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. While large volumes of water can be found throughout the Solar System, only Earth sustains liquid surface water. About 71% of Earth's surfa ...

; more recently, it has been used to describe the ongoing effort to determine the large-scale features of the

observable universe The observable universe is a ball-shaped region of the universe comprising all matter that can be observed from Earth or its space-based telescopes and exploratory probes at the present time, because the electromagnetic radiation from these obj ...

Traditional usage

The 14th-century work '' 'Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa-ghara'ib al-mawjudat'' by

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

physician

Zakariya al-Qazwini Zakariyya' al-Qazwini ( , ar, أبو يحيى زكرياء بن محمد بن محمود القزويني), also known as Qazvini ( fa, قزوینی), born in Qazvin (Iran) and died 1283, was a Persian cosmographer and geographer of Arab ances ...

is considered to be an early work of cosmography. Traditional

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

and

Jain Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current time cycle being ...

cosmography schematize a universe centered on

Mount Meru Mount Meru (Sanskrit/Pali: मेरु), also known as Sumeru, Sineru or Mahāmeru, is the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology and is considered to be the centre of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritu ...

surrounded by rivers, continents and seas. These cosmographies posit a universe being repeatedly created and destroyed over time cycles of immense lengths. Peasants spinning

In 1551,

Martín Cortés de Albacar Martín Cortés de Albacar (1510–1582) was a Spanish cosmographer.p131 Antonio Barrera-Osorio ''Experiencing nature: the Spanish American empire and the early scientific revolution;'' University of Texas Press, 2006 In 1551 he published the st ...

, from

Zaragoza Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...

, Spain, published ''

Breve compendio de la esfera y del arte de navegar A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...

''. Translated into English and reprinted several times, the work was of great influence in Britain for many years. He proposed spherical charts and mentioned magnetic deviation and the existence of magnetic poles.

Peter Heylin Peter Heylyn or Heylin (29 November 1599 – 8 May 1662) was an English ecclesiastic and author of many polemical, historical, political and theological tracts. He incorporated his political concepts into his geographical books ''Microcosmu ...

's 1652 book ''Cosmographie'' (enlarged from his ''Microcosmos'' of 1621) was one of the earliest attempts to describe the entire world in English, and being the first known description of

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and among the first of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The book has 4 sections, examining the geography, politics, and cultures of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, with an addendum on ''

Terra Incognita ''Terra incognita'' or ''terra ignota'' (Latin "unknown land"; ''incognita'' is stressed on its second syllable in Latin, but with variation in pronunciation in English) is a term used in cartography for regions that have not been mapped or do ...

'', including Australia, and extending to

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...

Fairyland Fairyland (''Faerie'', Scottish ''Elfame'', c.f. Old Norse '' Álfheimr'') in English and Scottish folklore is the fabulous land or abode of fairies or ''fays''. Old French (Early Modern English ) referred to an illusion or enchantment, the land ...

, and the "Land of Chivalrie". In 1659, Thomas Porter published a smaller, but extensive ''Compendious Description of the Whole World'', which also included a

chronology Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , '' -logia'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. I ...

of world events from

Creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing * Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it * Creationism, the belief tha ...

forward. These were all part of a major trend in the

European Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...

to explore (and perhaps comprehend) the known world.

Modern usage

astrophysics Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline said, Astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the nature of the h ...

, the term "cosmography" is beginning to be used to describe attempts to determine the large-scale

matter distribution In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic par ...

and

kinematics Kinematics is a subfield of physics, developed in classical mechanics, that describes the Motion (physics), motion of points, Physical object, bodies (objects), and systems of bodies (groups of objects) without considering the forces that cause ...

of the

, dependent on the

Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric The Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker (FLRW; ) metric is a metric based on the exact solution of Einstein's field equations of general relativity; it describes a homogeneous, isotropic, expanding (or otherwise, contracting) universe tha ...

but independent of the temporal dependence of the

scale factor In affine geometry, uniform scaling (or isotropic scaling) is a linear transformation that enlarges (increases) or shrinks (diminishes) objects by a '' scale factor'' that is the same in all directions. The result of uniform scaling is similar ...

on the matter/energy composition of the Universe. In recent decades, an acceleration in the expansion of the Universe has been observed. Several dynamic mechanisms have been proposed to explain this otherwise mysterious phenomenon. These include modified gravity and dark energy. Many observations focus on the high-redshift region. For example, the supernova in a joint light-curve analysis (JLA) compilation can span the redshift region up to 1.3; the cosmic microwave background (CMB) even can retrospect to the very early universe at z ~ 1100. To legitimate the expansion at high redshift, they introduced an improved redshift parametrization y = z/(1 + z) cosmography in the y-based expansion is mathematically safe and useful, because of 0 < y < 1, even for the high redshift. Later, some other methods of redshift were also proposed The word was also commonly used by

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

in his lectures.

References

{{Portal bar, Astronomy, Space Physical cosmology

Traditional usage

Modern usage

See also

References