Spatial extension

“ If the original decision is upheld after reconsideration, then the government shall comply with the aforementioned regulations and announce the implementation of the plan. Article 15 After the National spatial plan has been announced, the competent authorities of municipality or county (city) government shall draw up or revise their spatial plan within the period that has been specified by the central competent authority. ”

“ Why, a degree of latitude or longitude is less thought of than a furlong by those at home; and, in some of the backwood settlements, neighbours are as far-away from each other as the capital cities of the continent are separated.”
“That is true,” said Mr Rawlings. “The space appears so illimitable that one’s ideas as to measurement expand in a similar way, and the agriculturists calculate by the square mile instead of the acre in all their estimates of the land. ”

“ A true conception of space is not a simple matter. If I draw a straight line on a map between Bombay and Hong Kong and measure the distance, I have learned nothing whatever about the distance I should have to cover on a voyage. ”

“ What gives spatial forms their value in description of the environment is the ease with which discriminations and comparisons can be made in spatial objects: they are measurable, while unspatial sensations commonly are not. ”

“ The simple rectangle is disguised under the fret, the circle and spiral assert their sway over the boundaries of the palmette, or circle and semicircle unite to form the oval so frequently used both as a unit in Greek ornament and as a controlling boundary. These are typical border forms: for extension and repetition in fields of pattern we find the same geometric plans at work in combination and subdivision, forming at first the ornament itself, and afterwards furnishing the plan and controlling boundaries only. ”

“ These quiescent midspace zones grow larger and larger at greater and greater distances from Paradise and eventually encompass the borders of all space and completely incapsulate both the space reservoirs and the entire horizontal extension of pervaded space.
Space is neither a subabsolute condition within, nor the presence of, the Unqualified Absolute, neither is it a function of the Ultimate. It is a bestowal of Paradise, and the space of the grand universe and that of all outer regions is believed to be actually pervaded by the ancestral space potency of the Unqualified Absolute. ”

“ Marking off on each of these parallels or arcs both to right and left a distance representing five degrees of the earth’s longitude, he thus established the points through which to draw his meridians which marked the boundaries of each sector, leaving between the sectors equal spaces to be cut away should the sectors be used for pasting on the surface of a sphere. Every fifth meridian and every tenth parallel is drawn in black; the equator, the tropics, the polar circles, and the prime meridian are gilded. ”

“ Let us suppose two such stations to be chosen on or nearly on the same meridian of longitude, and 6,000 miles apart. From each of these stations the planet is seen to traverse the disk of the sun, like a dark spot moving steadily across an illuminated circular dial-plate. The lines as seen from stations so far apart are sensibly different. What the observers first seek to know is the apparent distance between these lines, the angle they form, when seen from the earth. ”

“ The traveller who, with weary steps, has passed from one extremity to the other of a continent, and whose memory is fraught with the recollection of the various scenes of the journey, is qualified to attach a distinct idea {31} to the higher terms of measurement; but the notion of extended space formed by those who have never passed the boundary of their native province is vague and unreal. Such are the notions which, with all the aids of astronomy and arithmetic, we form of the distances even of the nearest of the heavenly bodies. ”

“ The boundary zone in nature.
Nature abhors fixed boundary lines and sudden transitions; all her forces combine against them. Everywhere she keeps her borders melting, wavering, advancing, retreating. If by some cataclysm sharp lines of demarcation are drawn, she straightway begins to blur them by creating intermediate forms, and thus establishes the boundary zone which characterizes the inanimate and animate world. ”

“ A space of nearly forty degrees of latitude remains as little known to us, as if it were a part of the surface of Saturn, or an orb revolving round a star of the eighth magnitude. We know nothing of the inhabitants of those regions, or what kind of animate beings exist in them.
It was a prevailing opinion among the ancients, the correctness of which they for ages never called in question, that the temperate zones of our globe were alone habitable.—The torrid zone they imagined was composed of nothing but sandy deserts, scorched up by the vertical and insupportable beams of a burning sun. ”

“ The latitude, which you have found, measures your distance north or south from the equator or the pole. To find your longitude, you want to find your distance east or west from the meridian of Greenwich. Now, if any one would build a good tall tower at Greenwich, straight into the sky,—say a hundred miles into the sky,—of course if you and I were east or west of it, and could see it, we could tell how far east or west we were by measuring the apparent height of the tower above our horizon. ”

“ Territorial expansion is always preceded by an extension of the circle of influence which a people exerts through its traders, its deep-sea fishermen, its picturesque marauders and more respectable missionaries, and earlier still by a widening of its mere geographical horizon through fortuitous or systematic exploration. ”

“ That intervening land of any kind reduces the practical signalling distance between two ships or stations, compared with that which would be obtainable over the open sea, and that this loss in distance varies with the height, thickness, contour, and nature of the land ”

“ The observer must, therefore, correctly fix, in longitude and latitude, all remarkable points from distance to distance. Those to be selected of preference are the confluences, rapids, falls and ferries of water courses, summits of mountains, towns, court-houses, and angles of counties, and where these points are more than a third or half a degree distant, they should be supplied by observations of other points, such as mills, bridges, passes through mountains, &c., for in our latitudes, half a degree makes a difference of three-eighths of a mile in the length of the degree of longitude. ”

“ Even on this supposition, the vast spaces by which the planets are separated have no use, that we can discern, except to place them at suitable distances from the sun. Even on this supposition, their solid globes within, their atmospheres without are all merely subservient to the benefit of a thin and scattered population on the surface. The space occupied by men and animals on the earth's surface, even taking into account the highest buildings and the deepest seas, is only a few hundreds, or a thousand feet. ”

“ If we consider the map, obliterating the lines, and then seek to connect the most salient points of the planet’s topography by direct avenues of communication, we shall find that our putative lines fall exactly where the real ones occur. ”

“ Yet there is no contradiction, he urges, because the men of theory are "speaking of the habitable world known to them, according to the true understanding of latitude and longitude," and this "true understanding" is "not as great as has been realised in travel by Pliny and others." "The longitude of the habitable world is more than half of the whole circuit." ”

“ The one which cuts the north and south points is called the celestial meridian, and is evidently a projection of the terrestrial meridian. The vertical circle passing through the east and west points is called the prime vertical, and has a distinction above other vertical circles by virtue of its being the most favorable position for a body in observations for longitude. The heavens are further swept by an infinite number of parallels of altitude which are, as their name implies, parallel to the horizon. ”

“ The vertical dimensions—the physical limitation—are defined by the elevation of terraces and highlands, and they exhibit the greatest diversity of phenomena.
The horizontal dimensions supply most of the material for our elementary compends for political geography, which seldom make much account of vertical dimensions, and which, by no means, penetrate to their real value. They are commonly held to be a side-matter, to be touched lightly upon, or wholly cast aside. But both must be thoroughly studied; for they are mutually dependent, and are never found divorced in nature. ”

“ Yet, though the tract around him is seemingly bounded every where, the boundary is every where obscure, being formed of trees, thinly dispersed, and retired beyond each other at such distances, that, while they actually limit the view, they appear rather to border dim, indistinct openings into other tracts of country. Thus he always feels the limit to be uncertain, and until he is actually leaving one of these plains, will continually expect to find a part of the expansion still spreading beyond the reach of his eye. ”

“ Small naturally defined regions, which take the lead in historical development because they counteract the primitive tendency towards excessive dispersal, are in danger of teaching too well their lesson of concentration. In course of time geographic enclosure begins to betray its limitations. The extent of a people's territory influences their estimate of area per se, determines how far land shall be made the basis of their national purposes, fixes the territorial scale of their conquests and their political expansion. This is a conspicuous psychological effect of a narrow local environment. ”

“ The modern sextant is merely a modification of Newton's or Badley's quadrant, and its present construction seems to be perfect.
It therefore became possible accurately to determine the position of a ship at sea as regarded its latitude. But it was quite different as regarded the longitude that is, the distance of any place from a given meridian, eastward or westward. In the case of longitude there is no fixed spot to which reference can be made. The rotation of the earth makes the existence of such a spot impossible. ”

“ It is regretable that geographers lost the excellent opportunity offered by the Vienna Weltausstellung of 1873, to determine in congress a single point de départ of longitude for the civilised world. Now each nation has the pretension of making a first meridian of its own, consequently whilst geographical readers have a fair conception of latitude, that of longitude is especially hazy. ”

“ Latitude and longitude, which lie at the basis of all descriptive geography, are determined by observation. No map deserves the name, on which the position of important points has not been astronomically determined. Some even of our most important political and administrative arrangements depend upon the coöperation of this science. Among these I may mention the land system of the United States, and the determination of the boundaries of the country. ”

“ In the general case—
if z1 is the co-latitude of the centre of the map, z the co-latitude of any other point, α the difference of longitude of the two points, A the azimuth of the line joining them, and c the spherical length of the line joining them, then the position of the intersection of any meridian with any parallel is given (on the spherical assumption) by the solution of a simple spherical triangle. ”

“ The idea meant to be conveyed is that between the point of becoming and the actually pyknosed, or solidified stage in the process of creation there is a more or less well defined line of demarkation cutting off that which is spatiality from that which is non-spatiality. Beyond the limits of spatiality is an absence of geometric order. ”

“ At the base of the mountains themselves, where the bold relief begins, is always a piedmont zone of hilly surface but gentler grade, at whose inner or upland edge every phase of the historical movement receives a marked check. Here is a typical geographical boundary, physical and human. It shifts slightly in different periods, according to the growing density of population in the plains below and improved technique in industry and road-making. ”

“ Here a recent bank of drift snow offered just the right kind of material from which to cut building blocks. While a shelter was thus being walled, I moved about constantly to read my instruments and to study carefully the local environment.
In a geographic sense we had now arrived at a point where all meridians meet. The longitude, therefore, was zero. Time was a negative problem. There being no longitude, there can be no time. The hour lines of Greenwich, of New York, of Peking, and of all the world here run together. ”

“ In continents and countries the anthropo-geographer looks to see not what reliefs are present, but how they are distributed; whether highlands and lowlands appear in unbroken masses as in Asia, or alternate in close succession as in western Europe; whether the transition from one to the other is abrupt as in western South America, or gradual as in the United States. A simple and massive land structure lends the same trait of the simple and massive to every kind of historical movement, because it collects the people into large groups and starts them moving in broad streams, as it were. ”

“ On this projection there is a constant distance between the meridians, whereas on the earth they actually converge toward the poles. The distance between the parallels increases in passing toward the poles, approximately in the proportion of the secant of the latitude. For each small portion of the map the relative proportions are maintained as on the earth. ”