Aerial projection was a more imaginative leap than actual flight

Evidence

The best way to appreciate a field situation is to get above it. The medieval cartographer did this by climbing the highest hill, and the Mannerist painters of the Renaissance expanded the vistas of their paintings by doing the same thing. Surely one of the greatest inventions of man was the aerial projection in cartography, which represented a far bolder leap of the imagination than the fumbling exercises that eventually resulted in the actuality of flight. — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 451

Categorization

• SEED: An essay angle: how conceptual surrogates (maps, notations) may exceed their physical counterparts as imaginative advances.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 451