…In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection
that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City,
and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time,
those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers
Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire,
and which coincided point for point with it. The following
Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as
their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and
not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to
the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West,
still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by
Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the
Disciplines of Geography.
— Suarez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV,
Lerida, 1658
On Exactitude in Science
Jorge Luis Borges, Collected Fictions, translated by Andrew
Hurley