Tentative Taxonomies

Because of their extensive generality, concept maps can range from the very intuitive, heuristic and free flowing on one hand to the very analytical, arcane and formulistic on the other hand with mind maps on one end of an intellectual style scale and the use of highly abstract concepts maps in computer science spatial thinking maps on the other. While the very generality of the concept of concept maps may have contributed to its increasing and extensive use in all disciplines, the range and diversity of the concept has not help in its understanding. This chapter proposes to apply two cognitive styles theories to three specific concept mapping techniques to develop tentative taxonomies which may help to increase the understanding of the nature of concept maps and how they are and can be used.

A Brief History of Concept Maps

This section of concept maps will trace the works of Ramon Lull and Peter Ramus by comparing and contrasting their respective diagrams. In retrospect it will be argued that Ramon Lull's maps, which were basically religious in nature, were what we could call today, object maps, because of their colorful, concrete, almost multi-sensory presentation. On the hand, Peter Ramus's maps, according to cognitive styles theory to be discussed in a later chapter, were comparatively highly verbal and abstract. Marshall McLuhan, whose ideas lurk in the background throughout this book would say that according to his “law”, “the medium is the message,” Lull's medium, the illuminated manuscript on vellum, was quite different that Ramus' medium which was the printed book. The chapter ends with the philosophical language of Leibnitz, which has elements of what will be called verbal maps and spatial maps, two definite trends in concept mapping.

Visual Logic Maps (vLms)

This concluding chapter describes and analyses a concept map based, Visual Logic Maps (vLms). Essentially the vLms maps differ from the Thinking Maps discussed in the last chapter in that the Visual Logic Maps shifts its emphasis from map structure to map glyphs. In Thinking Maps it is the structure of the eight specific maps that determine how information is going to be organized and mentally process. The Visual Logic Maps reduces each of the maps to seven specific glyphs that operate as constant logical operators. In the conclusion of the chapter and the book it is argued that both the Thinking Maps and Visual Logic Maps are essentially non-verbal spatial maps that find the cognitive origins in the logical/mathematical diagrams of Venn and Euler. Unlike Venn an Euler Diagrams, however, Visual Logic and Thinking Maps are not domain specific nor mathematical in the numeric sense.

Verbal Concept Maps

Conceptual maps have become so advanced, and specific to narrow fields that today only specialized experts such as mathematicians and computer scientists are able to understand them. The esoteric logical and mathematical diagrams such as Euler's and Venn's specialized maps were nearly invisible because they were never very visible in the first place. Concurrently, general verbal and logical conceptual diagrams became nearly invisible because they were internalized as structures as verbal maps as figure receded into the ground as the accepted paradigm of logical thinking and exegesis among the educated. This chapter covers the retrieval of Verbal Concept mapping traceable to the works of Peter Ramus, focusing on the works of Albert Upton, David Ausubel, and J.D. Novak.

The Scientific Revolution and Its Aftermath

Concept mapping during the latter years of the Reformation as represented by Peter Ramus, was basically a verbal affair. Although Ramus claimed to be a logician, his logical ideas, even in his time, were superficial at best. However, while Ramean logic may not have been very sophisticated, his concept diagrams were highly ambitious as philosophical and educational devices in that they claimed to be meta-cognitive, and general devices, to improve, what today would be called critical thinking. This chapter discusses how the ethos of the Scientific Revolution, the drive away from a qualitative universe to a quantitative one, driven by printing technology, changed the idea of meta-cognitive concept mapping to a very specialized area, the field of formal logic as evidenced by the work of Leonhard Euler, Lewis Carroll and John Venn.