2.0 Measurement, Part 0 - Overview
Jun. 26th, 2023 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanwrightMeasurement is something that we never really think about. We do it all the time —
at the store, in the yard, on the highway — but we don't actually think about it. Measuring things seems obvious. But measurement the way we do it, with standard scales that represent well understood quantities, is a new technology. Measurement is a requirement for science, and we need to know not just what it is, but what it can or cannot do.
Medieval man, ancient man, had little place in his life for precision. If it was absolutely necessary, yes, numbers could be used, stones could be counted, tallies could be struck. But that was for vulgar activities where calculation couldn't be avoided.
"Are there not twelve hours in day?"1 was exactly the kind of rhetorical question a carpenter would not ask, but a money-changer would. And indeed, the Romans broke the day into exactly twelve hours from dawn to dusk - conveniently divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Convenient for breaking up the day. Like the length of an accordion, these hours stretched out during the spring and compressed in the fall, the number of hours in the day stayed the same while their length changed, always playing the same tune. Town life in the middle ages was little different. Early on, the church bell would ring three times a day. As life became more complicated and the burghers need more granularity, two more hours were added to make five bells, and later the seven canonical hours a day: matins, prime, tierce, sext, none, vespers, compline. You will sometimes see these referenced by more educated writers when they're showing off. The hours were just the smallest division of the day that people could be bothered with, their meaning was parochial not universal.2 There was no need for precision in time keeping. There wasn't that much to coordinate. It would take the invention and adoption of the water clock in the 14th century to change this. "Attempts to construct a wheel taht would make a complete revolution every twenty-four hours" were made in the 13th century.3 And once perfected, time was tamed and all hours became equal, and no hour was more equal than any other. For the bourgeois tradesmen of Europe "time is money"4 was already true, demanded clocks, and they proliferated all over the continent. Standardization was imposed on the Great and the Holy by the petty concerns merchants and professionals, and the romance of the day was replaced by the precision of the hour, which now had the same duration on Christmas as it was during the Feast of Saint John.
In medieval Europe and the rest of the world, this was the attitude towards measurement and precision, "the balance scale, the yardstick, and the hour class were devices of no more than immediate practical convenience. The old European's universe was one of qualities, not quantities."5 With that attitude, science couldn't get any father than the speculations of natural philosophers, who at best were neither right about how the works or entirely wrong.
But people have always needed measurements. They were needed in commerce, construction, and clothing, practical things for practical people. But all that was, as the philosophers say, a little dirty, and no one of quality would actually stoop to measuring things in order to learn about them. Our earliest measurements were based on our own bodies. This was very convenient, because it turns out that wherever you go, there you are. When planting tubers, you would place them one foot from each other. Your own foot. When writing deeds, the property would be demarcated in bowshots. How far you could shoot a bow. Think the three mile limit. Although the fact that these measurements differ from person to person, though the 17th century people were sparsely populated enough or rights were clear enough that any differences of opinion could be resolved reasonably well by reasonable people.7 And if they weren't, the local aristocrat could be counted on to adjudicate the dispute in the way that most benefited himself — a reasonable motivation for voluntary mediation if ever there was one.
Prior to industrialization, when people tended to be generalists, and using themselves as the basis of measurement was preferable. When a fisherman would make his own nets, he would make it according to the traditional formula with a length and width of "30 fathoms long and 20 ells wide."6 And it would be perfect. A fathom is the length of your outstretched arms, the ell is the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. If you made your own nets with your own measurements, the size of the net would be proportional to your height, not to large and not too small. It would be just right. And until the industrial revolution, with its mass production and its interchangeable parts, this was good enough.
But not always.
It is where "good enough" fails that the story of metrology begins, which makes it the third strongest contender for the beginning of the history of science.8 And by doing better than "good enough," by improving standards, we allowed science, and therefore ourselves, to flourish.
In this chapter, I will trace the evolution of measurement standards. I will start by (2.1) discussing the movement from anthropic measures towards aggregate standards and (2.2) overview they ways they are set in physics, engineering, and . Then, I will discuss the difference between what we measure and what is, first by (2.3) discussing the economic measurement of inflation and then by (2.4) tracing the evolution of the concept of temperature from a vague idea of warmness to a full scientific theory microphysics. I will then (2.5) examine some other kinds of measures, social connectedness and selectorate size, and finally see how (2.6) measurements can be manipulated for political ends.
-----
1 John 11:9
2 Crosby, A.W., The Measure of Reality. Cambridge (1997).
3 Ditto., p.79. I mean ibid.
4 Franklin, B., (1748).
5 Crosby, p. 47.
6 see Kula, W., Measures and Men (1970). R. Szreter, tr. Princeton (1986).
7 Ibid, p 5. I mean ditto. (Shouldn't this be Crosby?)
8 Coming after the emergence from Galileo to Newton and the ancient Greek philosophy of nature from Heraclitus to Aristotle.
at the store, in the yard, on the highway — but we don't actually think about it. Measuring things seems obvious. But measurement the way we do it, with standard scales that represent well understood quantities, is a new technology. Measurement is a requirement for science, and we need to know not just what it is, but what it can or cannot do.
Medieval man, ancient man, had little place in his life for precision. If it was absolutely necessary, yes, numbers could be used, stones could be counted, tallies could be struck. But that was for vulgar activities where calculation couldn't be avoided.
"Are there not twelve hours in day?"1 was exactly the kind of rhetorical question a carpenter would not ask, but a money-changer would. And indeed, the Romans broke the day into exactly twelve hours from dawn to dusk - conveniently divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Convenient for breaking up the day. Like the length of an accordion, these hours stretched out during the spring and compressed in the fall, the number of hours in the day stayed the same while their length changed, always playing the same tune. Town life in the middle ages was little different. Early on, the church bell would ring three times a day. As life became more complicated and the burghers need more granularity, two more hours were added to make five bells, and later the seven canonical hours a day: matins, prime, tierce, sext, none, vespers, compline. You will sometimes see these referenced by more educated writers when they're showing off. The hours were just the smallest division of the day that people could be bothered with, their meaning was parochial not universal.2 There was no need for precision in time keeping. There wasn't that much to coordinate. It would take the invention and adoption of the water clock in the 14th century to change this. "Attempts to construct a wheel taht would make a complete revolution every twenty-four hours" were made in the 13th century.3 And once perfected, time was tamed and all hours became equal, and no hour was more equal than any other. For the bourgeois tradesmen of Europe "time is money"4 was already true, demanded clocks, and they proliferated all over the continent. Standardization was imposed on the Great and the Holy by the petty concerns merchants and professionals, and the romance of the day was replaced by the precision of the hour, which now had the same duration on Christmas as it was during the Feast of Saint John.In medieval Europe and the rest of the world, this was the attitude towards measurement and precision, "the balance scale, the yardstick, and the hour class were devices of no more than immediate practical convenience. The old European's universe was one of qualities, not quantities."5 With that attitude, science couldn't get any father than the speculations of natural philosophers, who at best were neither right about how the works or entirely wrong.
But people have always needed measurements. They were needed in commerce, construction, and clothing, practical things for practical people. But all that was, as the philosophers say, a little dirty, and no one of quality would actually stoop to measuring things in order to learn about them. Our earliest measurements were based on our own bodies. This was very convenient, because it turns out that wherever you go, there you are. When planting tubers, you would place them one foot from each other. Your own foot. When writing deeds, the property would be demarcated in bowshots. How far you could shoot a bow. Think the three mile limit. Although the fact that these measurements differ from person to person, though the 17th century people were sparsely populated enough or rights were clear enough that any differences of opinion could be resolved reasonably well by reasonable people.7 And if they weren't, the local aristocrat could be counted on to adjudicate the dispute in the way that most benefited himself — a reasonable motivation for voluntary mediation if ever there was one.
Prior to industrialization, when people tended to be generalists, and using themselves as the basis of measurement was preferable. When a fisherman would make his own nets, he would make it according to the traditional formula with a length and width of "30 fathoms long and 20 ells wide."6 And it would be perfect. A fathom is the length of your outstretched arms, the ell is the length from your elbow to the tip of your middle finger. If you made your own nets with your own measurements, the size of the net would be proportional to your height, not to large and not too small. It would be just right. And until the industrial revolution, with its mass production and its interchangeable parts, this was good enough.
But not always.
It is where "good enough" fails that the story of metrology begins, which makes it the third strongest contender for the beginning of the history of science.8 And by doing better than "good enough," by improving standards, we allowed science, and therefore ourselves, to flourish.
In this chapter, I will trace the evolution of measurement standards. I will start by (2.1) discussing the movement from anthropic measures towards aggregate standards and (2.2) overview they ways they are set in physics, engineering, and . Then, I will discuss the difference between what we measure and what is, first by (2.3) discussing the economic measurement of inflation and then by (2.4) tracing the evolution of the concept of temperature from a vague idea of warmness to a full scientific theory microphysics. I will then (2.5) examine some other kinds of measures, social connectedness and selectorate size, and finally see how (2.6) measurements can be manipulated for political ends.
-----
1 John 11:9
2 Crosby, A.W., The Measure of Reality. Cambridge (1997).
3 Ditto., p.79. I mean ibid.
4 Franklin, B., (1748).
5 Crosby, p. 47.
6 see Kula, W., Measures and Men (1970). R. Szreter, tr. Princeton (1986).
7 Ibid, p 5. I mean ditto. (Shouldn't this be Crosby?)
8 Coming after the emergence from Galileo to Newton and the ancient Greek philosophy of nature from Heraclitus to Aristotle.
