Accumulated empirical knowledge does not dispel imaginative geographical knowledge

Evidence

Yet there is no use in pretending that all we know about time and space, or rather history and geography, is more than anything else imaginative. There are such things as positive history and positive geography which in Europe and the United States have impressive achievements to point to. Scholars now do know more about the world, its past and present, than they did, for example, in Gibbon’s time. Yet this is not to say that they know all there is to know, nor, more important, is it to say that what they know has effectively dispelled the imaginative geographical and historical knowledge I have been considering. We need not decide here whether this kind of imaginative knowledge infuses history and geography, or whether in some way it overrides them. Let us just say for the time being that it is there as something more than what appears to be merely positive knowledge. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 156

Categorization

• XREF: Establishes the coexistence of ‘positive’ and ‘imaginative’ knowledge that the reader will carry into later Islamophobia readings on how empirical scholarship can coexist with orientalism. — connects to: Knowledge of the Orient is constituted by the knower, not passively exists; Knowledge of social life does not produce greater control over fate — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 111; European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty (+1 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 156

Broader Connections

• Knowledge of the Orient is constituted by the knower, not passively exists #corroborates (0.85)
• European knowledge of the Orient assembled a restricted archive of tropes that controlled novelty #expands (0.78)
• Knowledge of social life does not produce greater control over fate #complicates (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 111