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SPATIAL ASSOCIATIONS IN
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The Dominion of Hunter-gatherers
Generally, hunter-gathers supplied their physiological needs with limited husbandry of plants and animals and with controls of their population numbers well within the carrying capacities of their ranges. The term ‘low intensity agriculture’ refers herein to practices that economise in the use of human energy to sustain and augment food supplies. This contrasts with higher intensities of agriculture that use domesticated animals and machinery to plough, irrigate and fertilise the soil and harvest crops. Estimates suggest that humans have existed on earth for some 2 million years. The so-called Neolithic Revolution involving higher intensity agriculture began some 10,000 years ago, but over 90% of the people who have ever lived have been hunter-gatherers. Thus the hunter-gathering system of low intensity agriculture was the most successful, persistent and sustainable adaptation that mankind ever devised.
Understandings between hunter-gatherers regarding allocation and use of resources developed through oral communications. Keeping the knowledge of these understandings alive depended on the collective memories of living people. These collective memories are the source of customary laws and concepts that govern relationships within and between tribes or clans. Where trade or exchange occurs, the understandings that people develop will have some similarities and equivalence with property, contract and succession of more formal legal systems. However, maintaining these understandings through spoken words and living memory requires regular physical contact with the things referred to – namely the land and its resources. Thus, the stipulation in the Mabo case that the existence of native title depends on a continuous association with the land is not some mere legal nicety. In the absence of a written record, a continuous physical association with the resources in question is the only way that people can perpetuate evidence of customary arrangements regarding land. It is the only way that people can know what they are talking about in a most literal sense and was
The Neolithic Revolution in Agriculture
Some evidence suggests that climate change may have affected the distribution of wild cereals and changed the lives of some former hunter-gatherers. Seemingly, this motivated a transition to higher intensity agriculture in the South West Asia at some time between 15,000 and 7,000 BC. Knowledge of this transition relies mainly on archaeological evidence and predates the invention of writing and the conventional historical evidence. Thus climate change may have been a stimulus; and more intensive crop cultivation, a response to a problem of human survival. This may explain also the seemingly independent rise of agriculture at various times and in geographically dispersed areas such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, South East Asia, Mesoamerica and Peru. By the time Europeans had circumnavigated the globe, the number of hunter-gatherers was only about 1% of the world’s population.
When territory becomes worth raiding and worth defending, and political and economic costs of raiding and defending become problematical, some advantage may be found in institutional arrangements that allow persuasive rather than coercive resource management. Quiet ownership of property and mutually beneficial exchanges between people depend on some depth of mutual understanding over what ownership and exchanging implies. Moreover, the move to agriculture brought about increased variety and levels of specialisation in human occupations and in the use of land. Thus, the Neolithic Revolution spurred significant innovations in alphabets, numbering systems, arithmetic, measuring, geometry, writing and record keeping to cope with the increasing complexity in commerce and government.
Wittfogel described the ancient civilisations that embodied flood control and large-scale agriculture as ‘hydraulic civilisations’. He argued that such civilisations needed particular institutional innovations to address particular needs of organisation.| The need for reallocating the periodically flooded fields and determining the bulk of hydraulic and other structures provide continuous stimulation for developments in geometry and arithmetic. Time keeping and calendar making are essential for the success of all hydraulic economies; and under special circumstances special operations of measuring and calculating may be urgently needed. It is no accident that among all sedentary peoples the pioneers of hydraulic agriculture and statecraft were the first to develop rational systems of counting and writing. It is no accident either that the records of hydraulic society covered not only the limited areas of cities and city states, of royal domains and feudal manors, but the towns and villages of entire nations and empires. The masters of hydraulic builders were great builders because they were great organizers; and they were great organizers because they were great record keepers. |
Complexity is manifest in two forms that are related to cognitive and communication processes. These forms are sometimes referred to as description- or ‘d-complexity’ and interpretation- or ‘i-complexity’ and relate to the variety of things that need to be kept in mind to manage outcomes effectively. Thus, an additional element of task specialisation occurs in attempting to describe the circumstances and interpret the writings. Ancient information specialists included scribes, lawyers and surveyors.
Increasing the complexity of the social and economic systems has benefits in increased productivity but exercising control when things go wrong unexpectedly is always a risk associated with misappropriation and use of increasingly powerful technologies. Thus ancient texts tell of famine, pestilence and plague with a role for soothsayers in foretelling the future. Climate has always influenced agricultural output and climatic fluctuations still contribute significantly to economic cycles. Archaeology, history and legend are replete with examples of the rise and fall of civilisations, dynasties and empires. A common theme is the inability to cope with disturbing influences on already complex technical, social and economic systems. The net effect is to revert to some less complex form of social and economic organisation.
HISTORIOGRAPHY OF CADASTRAL STUDIESSeemingly, the word ‘cadastre’ as now used in English has origins in the Greek katastikhon from kata meaning a list or register and stikhon meaning line by line. The word passed into Latin and Italian as the word catastra, into provincial medieval French, and .
Understandings about the origins of cadastral surveying have an evolution that reflects the order in which ancient knowledge has been uncovered. Seemingly, historical interpretation of these origins had an orientation in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries that reflects a French connection with Egyptology. The French occupied Egypt at the time of Napoleon and the French linguist was influential in deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics following discovery of the Rosseta Stone. This deciphering helped to discover, among other things, the land management practices of ancient Egypt. Seemingly, this nineteenth century intellectual activity gave some currency to French terminology where cadastre is ‘a register of the survey of land’, cadastrer means ‘to survey’ and cadastral refers to a land register. The purpose of enrolment was partly fiscal in supporting government finance, and partly jurisdictional in supporting a hierarchical system of government administration. In modern French, côntroler means - among other things - ‘to register, to put on the rolls, to enrol’.
A British association with Egypt continued and carried on the . through Norman French or through vistis to the Continent by diplomats, scholars and travellers.
Wittfogel’sanalysis . As an example, defending cities of ancient Mesopotamia differed from defence in Egypt with its natural defences of a Sahara desert to the South and the Red Sea to the East.
The invention and use of writing occurred in ancient lands now within borders of Turkey, Syria and Iraq at some time before the Egyptian experience. Evidence suggests that cadastral records can be dated to around 7000 years ago, depending on the accuracy of carbon dating. Arguably, discovering more about such early cadastral origins depends on archaeological expedition, deciphering the symbolism of any ancient records that can be found and refining the technology of carbon dating.
The Latin Connection
The Latin domus, referring to house or home; dominium, referring to lordship or ownership, also draw associations between home, land, rule, law, authority, judgement and perpetuating evidence through enrolments. Examples include domestic, domicile, domain, demesne, dominion, and dominate. A more direct association with land records appears in the term ‘Domesday’, on which further comment will be made in due course. The noun suffix ‘dom’ has a number of uses associated with real and conceptual space or categorisations. Examples include a physical space – as in kingdom: a categorisation of persons – as in officialdom: a rank or station – as in earldom: and a general condition – as in freedom or martyrdom. The word Christendom refers not only to Christians as a class but also as the world in which Christianity is practiced. Earldom had a former association with territory as a feudal rank associated with the English shire or county. (These meanings of ‘dom’ have no association with the acronym for ‘dirty old man’)
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
The problems of spatial organisation – in both ancient and modern societies – was to create the physical space where people could live: and boundaries - both physical and conceptual – to communicate understandings about the world and to preserve law and order. The making of rules about places requires three kinds of information - information about the people concerned, information about the places involved and information about the rights that the people concerned have in those places.
The information required to establish law and order depended on developing understandings about what was permissible and taboo in various places. Understandings depended on the invention of words through which understandings about place could be communicated. Since the problem of preserving law and order dates from the birth of civilisation itself, many words with ancient origins have maintained relevance to land management and records throughout history and into modern times.
Physical space is tangible and observable; and contrasts with conceptual space where the reference is to unseen things that people may have ‘in mind’. Something real can provide allegorical reference to something ‘in the mind’ or abstract. Thus it makes sense to speak of conceptual domains and boundaries without implying that the physical brain has actual corresponding domains.
Conceptual domains become the basis for a host of categorisations that are fundamental to language, logic and the development of ideas. Associating ideas with spatial referencing underpins extended use of spatial information systems as expert systems; and into so-called artificial intelligence. This association between physical and conceptual space is especially evident in diagrammatic representation of set theory and logic – in Venn diagrams for example. In summary, modern spatial information systems depend on areas and boundaries that are both real and conceptual in character.
American Cadastral Terminology
In English law, exclusive or monopoly rights over inventions date from a Statute of Monopolies. The form of instrument known as ‘letters patent’ confers exclusive rights – such as rights to land, to an invention, or to govern an area such as an administrative area or colony. The instrument bore the Great Seal of a sovereign power and was open to public view, being addressed to all people in the realm. Seemingly, the openness of this form of authorisation associates with other terms such as ‘patently obvious’, and ‘patent errors’ or ‘patent ambiguities’ in documents. American cadastral surveying literature often refers to a process of ‘patenting’ land and to a plan of survey as a ‘patent’. This accords with a more general legal usage involving documents that confer exclusive rights and are open to the public view. However, the usage also draws an association between accessibility to information, and rule or dominion over territory.
Patent and Latent Errors and Ambiguities
Deciding what is ‘erroneous’ depends on having redundant information that is ambiguous. Resolving the ambiguity depends deciding what information to accept and what to reject. Rejected information is deemed ‘erroneous’ on some sense of what is probably ‘correct’ or ‘true’. This element of probability in weighing evidence is inherent in standards of legal proof - beyond reasonable doubt, on the balance of probabilities, on the preponderance of evidence, for example.
A ‘patent error’ that is obvious from inspection and interpretation of a document contrasts with ‘latent error’ that might become obvious in comparing a written thing with the thing it purports to describe. Thus, a potential for error – or ‘latent ambiguity’ – exists in all documents that purport to describe land.
In all cases of written contracts for the sale of land you have in one sense, a latent ambiguity, because you cannot tell by looking simply at the description on paper exactly what is the subject matter. It is necessary to have recourse to extrinsic evidence to identify the subject matter of the contract.
Cadastral surveying practice depends on understanding the potential for error within and between documents - and then between documents and things on the ground referred to in documents. The documents may be on paper or in electronic formats; but the common elements are the symbolism of a written language and the function of interpreting the meaning that attaches to that symbolism. This compares with customary understandings about land communicated in a spoken language where there is a direct reference to things on the ground.
Letters Patent and Boundaries of the Queensland Jurisdiction
Establishment of the Colony of Queensland occurred through letters patent of 6 June 1859. Among other things, the document appointed Sir James Ferguson Bowen as Governor and keeper of the Great Seal of Queensland, and provided the first written description of the boundaries of the Queensland jurisdiction. These boundaries were amended by further letters patent. Surveys of the state borders laid out the locations of lines of latitude and longitude on the ground. The Queensland Boundaries Declaratory Act requires the courts in Queensland to take notice of boundaries as marked in determining the validity of land and mining leases issued by Queensland authorities.
ADMINISTRATION AND RECORD KEEPING
Two English Kings were notable for creating basic institutions that remain in modern government. Arguably, processes of inquiry and enrolment contributed significantly to their success in maintaining law and order. The first was William 1 – an illegitimate son born about 1027-1028 and reigning from 1066 to 1087. He was known both as ‘the Conqueror’ and ‘the Bastard’. The second was Edward 1 - born in 1239 and reigning from 1272 to 1307. He became known variously as ‘the Lawgiver’, ‘the English Justinian’, the Hammer of the Scots and ‘the Father of the Mother of Parliaments'.
The Domesday Book
The Domesday Book contains the records of an inquiry into land holdings initiated by William the Conqueror in 1086. The term ‘Domesday’ derives from the Old English ‘dom’ that became ‘dome’ in Middle English. Old English refers to the period prior to 1100 and Middle English, from 1100 to 1500. The idea associates with ‘doomsday’ with connotations of a final judgement - or at least one lasting for some considerable time.
The Hundred Rolls
Edward 1 instigated a survey of land holdings that has received less attention from all but the more dedicated historians. The returns from Edward’s enquiry - recorded in the ‘Hundreds Rolls’ – sought answers to the authority under which local lords acted in administering local justice. The effect was to re-assert fundamental doctrines of tenure and authority over tenants-in-chief. In other words, land titles and rights to govern and administer justice at a local level originate in a grant from the Crown. These enquiries placed the whole question of taxation and the King’s revenue on a firmer footing. As part of a quid pro quo with commoners, the king’s revenue became formalised as an appropriation by the newly established Model Parliament and its House of Commons. Nowadays, money bills originate in the lower houses of parliament as a constitutional principle.
Standardisation of Land Tenures
A first step in curtailing a growing and cumbersome variety of land tenure arrangements began in 1290 with a statute of Edward 1, known as Quia Emptores. The statute followed soon after Edward’s enquiry and controlled the terms and conditions of land subdivision and conveyance by barring sub-infeudation. Variety in land tenure arrangements could not increase but could decrease over time – through expiration of life estates and the like. Greater standardisation in feudal arrangements facilitated the king’s collection of feudal dues. It also facilitated alienation of land held in fee simple by standardising – and thereby simplifying - land tenure arrangements. The essential provision of Quia Emptores – that land is held directly of the Crown and not indirectly through any form of sub-infeudation - is central to the modern doctrine of tenure.
A further move towards simplification came with a statute of
Ecclesiastical Influences on Administration of Justice
Although the origin of the office is unclear, the duties of Lord Chancellor included chief chaplain and chief secretary to the king during Edward the Confessor’s reign (1042-1066). As a church official and chaplain, the Chancellor became known as ‘keeper of the king’s conscience’. The church maintained an association with scholarship and the Chancellor was a schooled and literate churchman. As a chief secretary, he organised an office known as the Chancery that was also responsible for preparing official documents under the Great Seal of the realm. These documents included royal charters, letters patent and land grants, and records were generally kept in rolled parchments or rolls.
The Office of Lord Chancellor survived the Norman Conquest but changed over time from one that was ecclesiastical to one that was judicial in character. Initially, the King referred petitions from aggrieved persons to his Privy Council for advice: with matters involving conscience being referred to the Lord Chancellor. Over time, direct petition to the Lord Chancellor replaced petition to the king and subsequent referral to the Lord Chancellor. Then the procedures grew into a petition to a Court of Chancery comprising the Lord Chancellor as president, a Master of the Rolls as next in rank, and other judges known as Vice-Chancellors. Through its development of a law of equity, the Court retained association with matters of conscience and their ecclesiastical origins.
The law of equity drew a distinction between legal interests and equitable interests in land. Land registration had the effect of making legal interests explicit so far as this was practicable. However, people could still promise explicitly to do things with land or allow people to draw reasonable inferences of an intention to do something. In these circumstances, the law of equity might hold a landowner to keep any promises made or inferred in a dealing in land. This requirement to live up to promises survives as an important exception to so-called indefeasibility in the Torrens system of registered title.
Nowadays, the highest officer concerned with public records and the administration of justice in England is the Lord Chancellor and Keeper of the Great Seal. He is also speaker of the House of Lords. The second-highest judicial officer is the Master of the Rolls who is responsible for maintenance of some of the public records. These include ancient rolls and court records. This maintains an association between controlling, enrolling and administering justice.
Matters of Conscience and Poor Relief
The Christian Church became part of Anglo-Saxon feudalism through the operations of various orders of monks and nuns. These orders constructed abbeys and monasteries within agricultural enterprises that were generally self-sufficient, except in regard to their own territorial defence. Feudal arrangements provided protection by a king in return for ecclesiastical services. These services included teaching related to the moral tone relief of the poor within communities.
The Normans introduced ‘church courts’ into England sometimes under auspices of a bishop, archdeacon, archbishop or pope. Church courts dealt with particular cases involving ‘disputes over the human soul’ – heresy, sexual immorality, disputes over wills. While trying to limit the power of Church courts Henry 2 incurred the opposition of Thomas Beckett, leading to the events that caused Henry to have him killed.
The breach with the church that occurred with excommunicated Henry 8 also led to large scale confiscation of church lands growth of a wool trade. This led to greater oversight of the church in England and the imposition of civil duties on parishes.
JUDICIAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE AREAS
Feudal systems had many similarities but also had local variations in Europe of the Middle Ages. Rank in society depended on the size and control that a person had in relation to territory. A king was the highest authority and ruled over a kingdom. Generally, rights to land originated in a grant from a king. A duke had a similar sovereign control over a smaller state or territory known as a duchy. A prince had rights as an heir to a reigning sovereign, especially an eldest son who inherited real property and title under a system of primogeniture. ‘Marquis’ – the next in rank below a duke - derives from ‘marchese’ – where ‘march’ means a boundary or frontier, especially between England and Scotland or Wales.
Counties, Shires, Boroughs, Hundreds, Tithings and Hides
A count ruled over a county as a feudal subdivision of a kingdom ruled by a sovereign king. A count owed loyalty to his king. A king of one kingdom could also possess rights to a county in another kingdom and owe feudal dues of loyalty and fealty to another king in respect of that county. A viscount was a deputy to a count, often an eldest son.
The Norman Conquest consolidated central government in England but left local government mostly intact. In rural areas, ‘shire’ became synonymous with ‘county’; and the European count was more or less equal in rank with the English ‘earl’ with military status as a lord lieutenant. The suffix ‘shire’ in many English place names usually refers to an English county. The word ‘earl’ derives from ‘ealdor’ meaning a chief. The Old English ‘ealdormann’ – meaning chief man - has a meaning that survives in ‘alderman’ – a local government representative in a municipality.
The ‘borough’ became the area of a municipality in England. ‘Borough’ has associations with ‘burg’ – meaning a fortified town. Municipalities generally operated as corporations with considerable autonomy in self-government granted under Royal Charter. The suffixes ‘borough’ and ‘burgh’ appear in some place names - in Marlborough, Edinburgh, Johannesburg, for example. The terms derive from the older ‘burg’ – as in Hamburg. ‘Burgomaster’ is a derivative being a chief magistrate in a town of Holland, Flanders and Germany. A burgess – being a citizen of an English municipality – has a French counterpart in ‘bourgeois’ and as a wage-earning class.
A city – a citadel – a town with a cathedral Later an urban area qualified as a city on the basis of population or through the issue of a municipal charter naming an area as a city and granting a degree of self government.
According to the Mosaic Law, reputedly given at Mount Sinai, all the tithe of the land was holy and to be appropriated for the work of God. The tithe was one tenth of production from land and included grains, fruits, herds and flocks. The work of God included relief of the poor, and administrative changes in tenth century Anglo-Saxon England divided shires into hundreds, and then into groups of ten freemen called tithings. Seemingly, a hundred generally comprised ten tithings. In administering law and order, communication took place between:
A peasant holding usually comprised a hide – a living area that varied according to productivity of land but seemingly averaged about 120 acres or 48 hectares. This territorial or spatial organisation of society allowed organisation of a constabulary and the raising of a militia if this became necessary.
The manor began as an Anglo-Saxon institution comprising a lord’s demesne, lands tenured through sub-infeudation, and villeinage lands. The statute of Quia Emptores barred creation of manorial arrangements involving sub-infeudation after 1290 but existing manors continued their controls over villeinage lands. Disputation over land and other matters became a province of village or manorial courts presided over by the Lord with successive appeals often available to courts of the hundred, the county and the king.
Simpson describes the villein status that existed on manors – one that virtually disappeared in the fourteenth century when the Balack Death reduced farm laboueres to t appoint hwere they gained bargaining power through their shortage of supply.
Thus manorial court rolls of copyhold land had the essential element of a register of title, in that a transfer could only be effected by registration. However, rights in copyhold varied from manor to manor, a thing that Quia Emptores aimed to avoid in relation to lands held in fee simple. – referred to by Torrens . Simpson, p29 . But
Shire, hundred and manorial courts had tribal origins. They were held in the open air with community participation, usually at some sacred spot marked by a stone and commemorated in place names such as Kingston, Maidstone and Stone.
The church involved itself in the teaching the Christian way of life and matters of conscience. Ecclesiastical functions included enrolment of baptisms and marriages: and oversight of laws and customs related to marriage, family, succession, inheritance and fair dealing in trade. Official registration of births, marriages and deaths saw the decline in the importance of parish records, though they remain of interest to genealogists and historians. Oversight of ‘matters of conscience’ at national level became a responsibility of Courts of Chancery. These matters were of concern at the parish level in maintaining law and order.
The ecclesiastical parish changed in character during Tudor times after the breach of Henry 8 with the Roman Church, the widespread confiscation of church lands, the securing of new political authority over the church and the need to institute new arrangements for poor relief. Tudor and Stuart legislation imposed increasing obligations on the parish. It also gradually absorbed functions previously performed by manors.
Four principal officers performed parish functions, namely:
The ‘pale’ - from the Latin palus meaning a stake - had a meaning as an area within a paled fence. The terms ‘palisade’ and ‘stockade’ applied to defensive staking of an area: and ‘blockade’, to blocking access to an area. Historically, the pale varied in size to include areas or regions such as church or administrative districts. In Ireland, the English Pale referred to an area under British rule centred on Dublin. The expression ‘beyond the pale’ referred originally to a place beyond established law and order where unruliness was thought to prevail. Nowadays, the expression refers more to conceptual rather than physical space – to something beyond the bounds of civilised behaviour.
‘Palatine’ had a number of meanings pertaining to a palace, a palace guard and to special privileges in commanding an area. Practical difficulties in imposing and enforcing central governmental controls near borders of a kingdom reflected in relative autonomy of areas known as palatine counties and palatinates. These kinds of difficulties affected the ability of British authorities to administer crown lands in colonies of North America and Australia.
Current Relevance of the Peerage
The peerage in the UK has lost its territorial associations as an indicator of status. Seemingly, reference in Magna Carta to ‘judgement by one’s peers’ originally referred to a landlord with a rank of baron or above. Its current popular meaning within an egalitarian Australian society is something like ‘judgement by one’s equals’ and pertains especially to the jury system.
Peers retain a right to advise the sovereign as members of the House of Lords - the upper house of the UK parliament. The Peerage now has five ranks - Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and Baron, in descending order of status. The ranks retain some relevance to students of Australian land administration in understanding the biographical details of people who influenced colonial administration. As an example, Regulations of 1831 that set the price of colonial land as 5 shillings per acre are known as both the Goderich Regulations and the Ripon Regulations. This is confusing without understanding that the minister of the Crown responsible for the colonies was Frederick John Robinson (1782-1859) who subsequently became Viscount Goderich and then the Earl of Ripon.
Translation of English Administrative Areas to Australia
In early administration in Australian colonies, British authorities tried to adapt English ideas to the Australian landscape. The ideas did not translate easily because the situation in the colonies did not compare with those in Britain. England had relatively confined and settled land patterns whereas the colonies had vast areas with sparse and somewhat shifting human populations. In Australia, the significant administrative problem was to regulate the alienation and settlement of Crown lands. Accordingly, administrative areas were directed more to assist land administration rather than the establishment of local government and law and order.
In 1829, British authorities tried to impose controls to limit settlement in New South Wales to nineteen counties. In further imposing but effectively created a situation that encouraged a squatting movement where authorities lost control over land settlement. .
In Queensland, land administration involved a territorial subdivision and resubdivision into land agents districts, counties and parishes. Local government areas in Queensland rarely coincide with county or parish areas and boundaries. Cadastral plans maintained a connection with historical land administration by referring to parishes and counties. Since local government approval is usually required for cadastral plan registration, plans also refer to the relevant local government area – defined as a city, town or shire – since enactment of the Local Authorities Act 1902 (Qld). The term ‘borough’ is now virtually unused in Australia.
The term county applies to some local government areas in New South Wales – as in the County of Cumberland – and to functioning of court areas in Victoria. The county remains as an important administrative district in the US
British authorities attempted to limit territorial expansion by declaring a settled area in 1829 as nineteen counties.
and the county was an administrative area with its own constabulary and court system
SPATIOTEMPORAL CATEGORIES AND CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES
In spatial referencing, systems usually recognise points, lines, polygons (or areas) and volumes bounded by plane surfaces. Boundaries formed by arcs and curved surfaces are possible but resultant areas and volumes become more complex in their description, interpretation and visualisation. The point has location but no dimension and does not permit subdivision. Lines, areas and volumes have dimensions that allow various degrees of subdivision and aggregation. In dynamic systems, time becomes an additional dimension that can be subdivided and aggregated. Thus spatiotemporal categories govern the ability to aggregate and dissect information in dynamic systems at various levels of hierarchy. In dynamic systems of various kinds – social, economic, ecological, for example – the hierarchy of control depends on a hierarchy of commensurate systems of information. This becomes important in systems and subsystems at various levels – an example of ‘wheels within wheels’.
In general, the direct reference between a word and the thing to which it refers is possible when the thing is tangible. Thus, a parent can refer to something – a tangible referent such as a ‘cat’, for example – and a child can associate the experience with the word and what it means. Referring to something that someone has ‘in mind’ – an intangible or abstract referent such as an idea or theory – usually occurs through allegory. Allegory usually occurs through simile or metaphor. Saying that ‘life is like a journey’ is a simile; that ‘life is a journey’, a metaphor.
The direct connection between a word and a referent can occur with real things such as land. A different process occurs in referring to something such as an idea, an intention or something incorporeal – something that someone has ‘in mind’. Thus, a number of allegorical devices link ideas and places:
Classification (topos or locus = place) - common place (‘topics’ and ‘topical’), common ground (‘topography’), areas or fields of interest, ‘toponymy’ = place names – actual and conceptual ‘bounds’, ‘boundaries’, ‘termini’
– (time and place), ‘journeys’, ‘voyages’, ‘roads’, ‘highways’, ‘channels’, ‘milestones’, ‘watersheds’, ‘on the right track’, in a ‘groove’ or ‘rut’, ‘trivia’, ‘north’ and ‘south’ in results
Terminus – the Roman god of boundary stones – connected with ancient ceremony of boundary perambulations and ‘beating the bounds’.
Spatial allegories involving standards of behaviour and practice are prevalent in terms such as ‘benchmarking’, ‘level playing fields’, and being ‘in the right ballpark’
SUMMARY
An aim was to show an association between enrolling and controlling.
ELEMENTS OF CONTROL
The very idea inherent in words such as ‘organising’, ‘controlling’, ‘managing’ or ‘governing’ implies:
Thus, organisation implies information. Similarly, spatial organisation implies knowing where things are, where things are happening and what can be done to make these things more suited to some human purpose. Animal life generally has a predisposition for spatial orientation and learning through experience. This predisposition is genetically determined through sensory apparatus; information processing, storage and recall; and information processes that drive muscular or motor responses.
Humans are able to expand considerably on their genetic inheritance through subconscious conditioning of responses, and in physical training and mental learning that involves varying levels of awareness and purpose. Learning through experience depends on:
Senses and perceptions through which things and events are ‘experienced’
memorising processes that store experience
remembering processes that recall experience to guide further actions
Humans have a considerable capacity to extend these elements of control through:
the ranges of human sensory apparatus through scientific instruments, to improve on human memory through memory training, and manipulate motive powers through animals and machines.
To blur the distinction between what is natural and over which a person has no control and what is artificial and under some element of control through subject to invention and possible improvement
Much of the organisation that occurs as a matter of practice involves rules that include three kinds of information. These kinds of information provide a link between a particular person or group of persons who have particular rights and obligations in relation to a particular territory.
Spatial organisation is a human invention and builds on capabilities derived from other inventions. Some of these inventions include the tangible observing equipment of science; and memory in the form of paper and computer records. Other inventions of perhaps greater significance involve the intangible institutional infrastructure that gives meaning to various forms of written description. These inventions include human and machine languages; logic inherent in all systems of mathematics; understandings and conventions inherent in all socially accepted systems of measurement and the like. The problem of control is no longer one of perception, thought and motor actions at the level of an individual. A new and different order of complexity emerges through the collective observations, thoughts and actions of whole societies or whole nations. Cadastral systems can contribute information to achive understanding . However, the study of cadastral systems is becalmed and goes nowhere. Control over cadastral systems depends on some metal map and some theory about what can be done.
