Absences and Presences

More Peter Turchi. Oh, so tricky:

. . . a return to practical mapping . . . eventually led Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville to take a radical stance, renouncing decorations [in maps], and leaving blanks in their stead: "To destroy false notions, without even going any further, is one of the ways to advance knowledge." (36)

And then, a little later:

Thanks to Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville and his colleagues, a blank on a map became a symbol of rigorous standards; the presence of absences lent authority to all on the map that was unblank. (37)

Reminds me of heady discussions in a Derrida seminar I once imbibed. There's also something to be said regarding poetry aesthetics here, but I'm just not sure. Perhaps the line break or an ability to spread words, to create stanza spaces or push words to different spaces separated by more space, lends an authority to the words themselves, as if, perhaps, the remaining "unblanks" carry more consideration than if the page were full (as in prose?).

Even the offset of a block quote gains authority, yes? Rigorous standards and all.