For four centuries, the geography of the Modern Age provided extremely contrasting visions of the world: utopias, legends, chimeras, prodigies, and hypotheses mingled with a scientific approach that was becoming more refined: precise measurement of the meridian, gravity and magnetic declination, quantification, introduction of statistics, search for universal principles.

Cultural shocks were huge. The search for the location of Paradise, the sixth antipodal continent, El Dorado or the Fortunate Isles continued in all seriousness. While at the same time, the planet was methodically gridded,

systematically controlled by the lines of longitude and latitude and demystified by scholarly maps and austere

statistics.

Similarly, while some still equated the Earth as a living thing or saw it as the unique and glorious centre of the cosmos, others demonstrated that it was nothing but a tiny, banal grain of sand in the now infinite universe of the plurality of worlds.

From the imaginary in geographical representations to the assimilation of the new immensity and awareness of the world’s finitude, geographers gradually drew up new systems for understanding the world.

A highly illustrated multidisciplinary voyage around the Earth.