Proximity
In today’s brown bag, we discussed fundamental concept #2: proximity. After thediscussion about location last week, it turned out that both have a few things in common.
First of all, both are relations. One can only be located relative to some object, and one can only be near to something. Proximity, however, is even more relative, as it depends on the current observer and context. A place 1km away may be near for young people to walk to, but quite far for the elderly. Also, the spatial context defines the realm of what is near: when explaining where Münster is in Germany, we may say that it is near the Dutch border. Evidently, the actual distance behind this use of near is completely different from the case where we tell someone that the washrooms are near the elevator.
Second, both (spatial) location and proximity have their counterparts on the temporal and thematic dimensions. Temporal proximity is intuitive (e.g., soon); thematic proximity boils down to similarity. This analogy has been expressed in geometric approaches to similarity, such as Conceptual Spaces. As such, Tobler’s first law of geography (“Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”) also applies to the thematic space. See also Montello et al. (2003): Testing the First Law of Cognitive Geography on Point-Display Spatializations.
In conclusion, we can only safely say (i.e., context free) that something is “nearer than” something else, not “near” per se.
- Carsten
