Mapping Dark Matter and the Venice Paradox

Abstract

The question of the boundary between the mappable and the unmappable is brought into focus by the recent announcement of the map of dark matter and its parallels with paradoxes that have long defined Venice. The dark matter map, in bringing into visibility that which was previously invisible, seems to have forced a reconfiguration of thought and knowledge very like that brought about in Venice by the publication of Luca Paciolo’s mathematical encyclopedia in 1494. I explore these transformations in knowability and mappability in Venice’s early forms of knowledge, objectivity, value, and place that came to underpin capitalism, science, and modernity, contrasting them with the transformations brought about by the mappers of dark matter and current problems besetting the contemporary Venetian lagoon.