Spatial Concept Perspectives

We have gathered ~300 excerpts from published works about fundamental spatial concept terms. These have been cross-referenced with the concept lexicon appearing on the left. Those terms were drawn from the U.S.National Science Education Standards (NSES 1996) for topic areas B - Physical Science, C - Life Science, D - Earth and Space Science, as well as from the 1994 U.S. Geography Teaching Standards for grades 9-12. Those standards can be browsed here.

spatial concept terms

disciplinary perspectives on "center"

alternating repetition

Centers intensify other centers by repeating...It is a fact about the world that things repeat...the repetition which occurs in things which have life is a very special kind of repetition. It is a kind where the rhythm of the centers that repeat is underlined, and intensified, by an alternating rythm interlocked with the first and where a second system of centers also repeats, in parallel...(this) intensifies the first system, by providing a kind of counterpoint, or opposing beat (p 165-6)

Alexander (2004)

The Nature of Order, Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life

center

...a distribution may also be abstracted as a series of focal points of special intensity or character. So a city can be single-, or many-centered; its foci may be multi-purpose or very specialized; its information flows may peak at certain points, or be broadly dispersed; and so on (p 357).

Design (urban, architecture)
Architecture

Lynch (1984)

Good City Form

center-periphery

Our word radiates out from our bodies as perceptual centers from which we see, hear, touch, taste and smell our world. (This describes) the CENTER-PERIPHERY schema as though it were totally a matter of (an individual's) perceptual space...in (that) "world," some things, events and persons are more important than others...more central to (one's) interactions. (This) shows itself not only in the structure of (the) perceptual field but equally important as a structure of (one's) social, economic, political, religious and philosophical world (p 124-125).

Linguistics
Philosophy

Johnson, M. (1987)

The Body in the Mind

strong centers

...possibly the most important feature of a thing which is alive is that we find that the various wholes which exist at different levels appear not merely as centers or "wholes" or "blobs" but actually as strong centers (p 151). In short, the entire design sets up a vector field so that every point has the property that from that point the center is in a certain direction: one direction is going to the center, and another is going out away from it (p 154).

Alexander (2004)

The Nature of Order, Book 1: The Phenomenon of Life