Editing On Exactitude in Science

{{Short description|Short story by Jorge Luis Borges}}
"'''On Exactitude in Science'''", or "'''On Rigor in Science'''" (Spanish: "Del rigor en la ciencia") is a one-paragraph [[short story]] by Argentine writer [[Jorge Luis Borges]].

==Plot==
The story, [[Literary forgery|credited fictionally]] as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, ''Viajes de varones prudentes'', Libro IV, Cap. XLV, [[Lleida|Lérida]], 1658", describes an empire where [[cartography]] becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. Later generations come to disregard the map, however, and as it decays, so does the land and society beneath it.<ref>J. L. Borges, ''A Universal History of Infamy'' (translated by Norman Thomas de Giovanni), Penguin Books, London, 1975. {{ISBN|0-14-003959-7}}.</ref>

==Publication history==
The story was first published in the March 1946 edition of ''Los Anales de Buenos Aires'' as part of a piece called "Museo" credited to "B. Lynch Davis", a joint pseudonym of Borges and [[Adolfo Bioy Casares]]. It was collected later that year in the 1946 second Argentinian edition of Borges' ''Historia universal de la infamia'' (''[[A Universal History of Infamy]]'').<ref name="bibliography">{{Cite web |url=http://www.borges.pitt.edu/1946 |title=1946 &#124; Borges Center |access-date=2011-12-14 |archive-date=2013-01-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130124020323/http://www.borges.pitt.edu/1946 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

The story is no longer included in current Spanish editions of the ''Historia universal de la infamia'', as since 1961 it has appeared as part of Borges' collection ''[[Dreamtigers|El hacedor]]''.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.borges.pitt.edu/node/144 |title = 1960 |website=Borges.pitt.edu}}</ref>

The names "B. Lynch Davis" and "Suárez Miranda" would be combined later in 1946 to form another pseudonym, B. Suárez Lynch, under which Borges and Bioy Casares published ''Un modelo para la muerte'', a collection of detective fiction.<ref name="bibliography" />

==Influences and legacy==
"On Exactitude in Science" elaborates on a concept in [[Lewis Carroll]]'s ''[[Sylvie and Bruno|Sylvie and Bruno Concluded]]'': a fictional map that had "the scale of a mile to the mile." One of Carroll's characters notes some practical difficulties with this map and states that "we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."<ref name=":0">{{cite book|last=Edney|first=Matthew H.|title=Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765-1843|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LF_FBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA353|year=2009|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=978-0-226-18486-9|page=353n39}}</ref>

{{Quote box |width=90% |align=center |salign=right |source=from [[Lewis Carroll]], ''[[Sylvie and Bruno|Sylvie and Bruno Concluded]], Chapter XI, London, 1893''
 |quote  =
"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do ''you'' consider the ''largest'' map that would be really useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

"Only ''six inches''!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a ''hundred'' yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We  actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a ''mile to the mile''!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said  Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight ! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."}}

Italian writer [[Umberto Eco]] expanded upon the theme, quoting the story as the epigraph for his short story "On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1", collected in his ''How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays''.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Eco |first=Umberto |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3bytC0aZs5IC&pg=PT103 |title=How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |year=1995 |isbn=978-0-547-54043-6 |page=95|url-access=limited}}</ref>

French philosopher [[Jean Baudrillard]] cited "On Exactitude in Science" as a predecessor to his concept of [[hyperreality]] in his 1981 treatise ''[[Simulacra and Simulation]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.kareneliot.de/downloads/JeanBaudrillard_Simulations_and_Simulacra.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2021-03-21 |archive-date=2021-01-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210114150707/http://www.kareneliot.de/downloads/JeanBaudrillard_Simulations_and_Simulacra.pdf |url-status=dead }}</ref>

==See also==
* [[Map–territory relation]]
* ''[[Welcome to the Desert of the Real]]''

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://neilgreenberg.com/ao-quote-borges-on-exactitude-in-science/ Full text, translated to English by Andrew Hurley]
*[https://youtube.com/watch?si=JKc9xJO16-HLFY1T&v=zwDA3GmcwJU Spanish Audio "On Rigor in Science", read by J. L. Borges]

{{Jorge Luis Borges}}

[[Category:Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges]]
[[Category:1946 short stories]]
[[Category:Works about hyperreality]]
[[Category:Argentine speculative fiction works]]