Read the following passage:
For centuries, cartography was as much an exercise in narrative and decorative artistry as it was in spatial measurement. Early maps were populated with mythological beasts, imagined coastlines, and elaborate heraldry, reflecting a rhetorical posture of wonder and speculative discovery. The cartographer operated not as a neutral transmitter of geographical data, but as a storyteller who framed the unknown through the lens of cultural belief and imperial ambition. By the late seventeenth century, however, a stylistic transition began to crystallize. The introduction of triangulation and more precise astronomical instruments initiated a shift toward mathematical sobriety. The once-crowded margins of maps were systematically cleared of their mythological denizens, replaced by grid lines, longitudinal coordinates, and austere, blank spaces denoting unexplored territory. This stylistic purging was not merely technical; it represented a fundamental realignment of the authorial perspective. The mapmaker's voice receded, adopting a detached, omniscient stance that presented the map as an unmediated mirror of nature. Yet, this claim to absolute objectivity was itself a rhetorical construction. By masking the subjective choices of selection, projection, and naming behind a facade of scientific neutrality, modern cartography asserted a quiet authority, one that served the administrative and territorial needs of the rising nation-state under the guise of disinterested truth.
Based on the passage, arrange the following descriptions of the author's rhetorical stance and focus in the order they unfold in the text, from the beginning of the passage to the end.
- 1Characterizing early mapmakers as subjective storytellers who infused geography with cultural myth and imperial ambition.
- 2Outlining the transition to mathematical sobriety and the systematic removal of decorative elements from maps.
- 3Describing the mapmaker's retreat into an omniscient, detached perspective that claims to mirror nature directly.
- 4Exposing the rhetorical nature of modern cartographic objectivity and its service to state authority.