Why map a system?

*"All in all, the act of mapping aids in student learning, whether it’s done on paper or on a laptop. We map when we want to see things that are hard to see. We do not map when things are obvious. We map when things are complex, confusing, bewildering or curious. We map to share with others and we map together. We map to make the intangible tangible. We map as a way to enhance our image-ination. Building mental images aids our understanding. But mapping itself is not merely useful, it has enormous potential, especially if done right... A picture really is worth a thousand words. Maybe more. A picture can revolutionize a field. But it depends on how insightful the underlying cognitive architecture of that picture is.” *

~Canales, A.C., Maymon, P.L., and Cabrera, D. (2020). The Universal Cognitive Grammar of Systems Mapping: A Rubric to Evaluate the Various Tools and Techniques of Systems Mapping. Journal of Applied Systems Thinking (20) 9.