ArgumentMetrological techniques to establish shared quantitative measures have often been seen as signs of rational modernization. The cases considered here show instead the close relation of such techniques with antiquarian and revivalist programs under imperial regimes. Enterprises in survey sciences in Egypt in the wake of the French invasion of 1798 and in India during the East India Company's revenue surveys involved the promotion of a new kind oforiental metrologydesigned to represent colonizers’ measures as restorations of ancient values to be (...) applied to current systems of survey and measurement. Surveyors’ practice and hardware help clarify the significance of the complex historical and political functions of scientific standards. The balance of the paper discusses the survey work of later nineteenth-century indigenous Egyptian astronomers at a conjuncture of major economic and political dislocation to explore the various versions of antiquity at stake in these metrological programs. (shrink)

The representational theory of measurement has long been the central paradigm in the philosophy of measurement. Such is not the case anymore, partly under the influence of the critique according to which RTM offers too poor descriptions of the measurement procedures actually followed in science. This can be called the metrological critique of RTM. I claim that the critique is partly irrelevant. This is because, in general, RTM is not in the business of describing measurement procedures, be it in idealized (...) form. To support this claim, I present various cases where RTM can be said to investigate measurement without providing any measurement procedure. Such limit cases lead to a better understanding of the RTM project. They also illustrate some of the questions which the philosophy of measurement can explore, when it is ready to go beyond the metrological viewpoint. (shrink)

In this paper I propose to read the history of systems of units, and in particular the current reform of the International System of Units (SI), understood as a set of measuring norms, in the light of reflective equilibria. The idea is that the model of reflective equilibria actually applies to processes which can be empirically observed or studied. This can help us to understand the nature of normativity and to shed light on its relativity to, and dependence on, practice.

Astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth’s 1864–65 expedition to measure the Great Pyramid of Giza was planned around a system of linear measures designed to guarantee the validity of his measurements and settle ongoing uncertainties as to the Pyramid’s true size. When the intended system failed to come together, Piazzi Smyth was forced to improvise a replacement that presented a fundamental challenge to the metrological enterprise upon which his system had been based. The astronomer’s new system centered around a small lump of (...) basalt, now held at Cambridge’s Whipple Museum of the History of Science, which nucleated a wide array of material and scientific considerations. Through a bipartite analysis of the physical and narrative dimensions of Piazzi Smyth’s basalt Standard, I develop the implications of its use and construction for understanding the material constitution of scientific instruments. In particular, I illustrate how instruments are locally constituted through co-accountable systems and how their material features become integrally implicated in both their uses and meanings. (shrink)

Summary The growing need for standardized units of measure led to major metrological reforms in the mid-nineteenth century. This paper focusses on their implementation in the Kingdom of Hanover and the involvement of C.F. Gauss. His papers reveal how much the success of his precision measurements hinged on the skill of his mechanic M. Meyerstein. A discussion of the regional weights and measures and the standardization procedure is followed by a description of various precision balances and the weighing methods employed (...) as well as a review of the problems posed by reliable length calibration. The success of the enterprise rested not only on intellectual prestige and ministerial clout but also on the hands-on skill of the mechanical practitioner. (shrink)

The main aim of this research is to analyse the peculiarities of legal regulation of metrology and the problems arising in this area. The content of the article is divided into two parts. The first part of the article analyses the concept of metrology, reveals the relation between fundamental and legal metrology and accentuates problems of metrology as well as repressive means applied in the metrological procedure. The second part analyses the European Union as well as (...) national legislation regulating the implementation of metrology in Lithuania and peculiarities of harmonisation of national law with the European Union legislation. (shrink)

Metrology is a discipline of expunging impurities. The mid-nineteenth century French physicist Henri-Victor Regnault created a whole new way of doing experiments, attempting to produce standards physically by the "direct method." His immodest ambition to control all disturbing parameters represents a relict in the physical sciences of Romantic hopes for an all-embracing, artistic and aesthetic approach to nature, expressed in the absolute, eternal determination of nature's constants and their numerical relationships. The novelist Gustave Flaubert, whose rejection of metaphysics, love (...) for finest detail, concern for impartial treatment of the human psyche, and perfectionism, made him Regnault's literary complement, likewise hoped for this utopian union of science and art. There is a romantic and a modern ring to their ideals which were not to be achieved by optimism, but by introducing systematic doubt, by thoroughly studying impurities and expunging them. Nature did not speak clearly, but hid behind a multitude of disturbing effects—revealed only by the experimenter's or writer's voluntary restraint and self-denial, a disinterestedness Regnault and Flaubert celebrated as the highest and holiest morality. For them, attention to secondary matters became primary, because they expected them to lead the way to the grail. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.4 (2002) 555-575 [Access article in PDF] Measurer of All Things:John Greaves (1602-1652), the Great Pyramid, and Early Modern Metrology Zur Shalev [Figures]Writing from Istanbul to Peter Turner, one of his colleagues at Merton College, Oxford, John Greaves was deeply worried: Onley I wonder that in so long time since I left England I should neither have received my brasse quadrant which (...) I left to be finished for my journey thither, nor any notice of it [...]. I agreed with mr. Allen upon price and the time that he should finish it, if he hath failed me he hath done me the greatest injury that can be. 1A great injury indeed, because Greaves's journey to Italy and the Levant was all about measuring—luckily the instrument did reach him at some later stage. The thirty-six-year-old Professor of Geometry at Gresham College was taking the measurements of countless monuments and objects in the locations he visited. In Rome he measured, among many other ancient structures, Cestius' Pyramid and St. Peter's basilica. In Lucca, deeply impressed, he counted his paces around the beautiful city walls. In Siena he observed together with a "Mathematical Professor" one of the Sidera Medicea using "a glass." In Egypt he even hurt his eyes gazing at the sun, looking for sunspots and measuring its diameter. 2 His measuring mission, however, culminated in the fixing of the [End Page 555] latitudes of Istanbul, Rhodes, and Alexandria. As Bishop Juxton wrote before the trip to Greaves's employers at Gresham College (apparently using Greaves's own promotional language): This worke I find by the best astronomers, especially by Ticho Brache [ sic ] and Kepler, hath beene much desired as tending to the advancement of that science, and I hope it wil be an honour to that nation and prove ours if we first observe it. 3A mathematician-Orientalist, commanding the ancient and modern astronomical and geographical literature of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian authors, Greaves was arguably the best qualified European at the period to perform the task. That he miscalculated the latitude of Rhodes is of less consequence for his present-day readers. 4 However, one of the most obscure and therefore telling of his measurement activities was the survey of the Pyramids of Giza, which resulted in the Pyramidographia (1646). 5 This remarkable learned treatise and travel account hybrid, which is at the focus of the present study, gives us a glimpse into the rich and complex world of scientific antiquarians.Greaves is most conveniently remembered today as an Orientalist. While we must be thankful to Edward Said for broadening the meaning of Orient-alism—from an academic discipline, accumulating objective knowledge of the East, into a much wider cultural discourse, his emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and on the European colonial mindset is less useful for making historical sense of what early modern Orientalists were doing—physically and culturally. We can understand Greaves's "Oriental" enterprise in its [End Page 556] depth and variety only within long established European traditions of scholarship and keeping the intellectual concerns of his time in mind. 6But beyond articulating for us the nature of early Orientalism, the Pyramidographia, as well as Greaves's entire scientific career, situated in their wider European context, provide a fine entry point into a foreign world of learned practices and methods. It teaches us how well into the seventeenth century astronomy and philology, observation and bookishness, could coalesce in one figure, in one enterprise. 7 We still lack a modern biography of Greaves, a complex protagonist of a complex period, and even a full evaluation of his intellectual work. While this paper surely cannot compensate for that, I do attempt here a brief exposition of Greaves's Pyramidographia. 8Modern historians of archaeology and Egyptology, preoccupied mostly with the disciplines' progress and development of scientific standards, have noted the Pyramidographia in passing and praised its precise language and rigorous research... (shrink)

In 2012, the Geological Time Scale, which sets the temporal framework for studying the timing and tempo of all major geological, biological, and climatic events in Earth’s history, had one-quarter of its boundaries moved in a widespread revision of radiometric dates. The philosophy of metrology helps us understand this episode, and it, in turn, elucidates the notions of calibration, coherence, and consilience. I argue that coherence testing is a distinct activity preceding calibration and consilience, and I highlight the value (...) of discordant evidence and trade-offs scientists face in calibration. The iterative nature of calibration, moreover, raises the problem of legacy data. (shrink)

At the intersection of taxonomy and nomenclature lies the scientific practice of typification. This practice occurs in biology with the use of holotypes (type specimens), in geology with the use of stratotypes, and in metrology with the use of measurement prototypes. In this paper I develop the first general definition of a scientific type and outline a new philosophical theory of types inspired by Pierre Duhem. I use this general framework to resolve the necessity-contingency debate about type specimens in (...) philosophy of biology, to advance the debate over the myth of the absolute accuracy of standards in metrology, and to address the definition-correlation debate in geology. I conclude that just as there has been a productive synergy between philosophical accounts of natural kinds and scientific taxonomic practices, so too there is much to be gained from developing a deeper understanding of the practices and philosophy of scientific types. (shrink)

Exactitude. The Genesis of an Epistemic Virtue in the ‘Long Nineteenth Century’. The article examines the genesis of exactitude as an epistemic virtue in both scholarly and scientific contexts in the 19th century, mainly in Prussia. Starting with an influential historiographic work on ancient metrology three semantic fields of accuracy, exactitude and precision are differentiated and pursued in their etymologies as well as applications. The historic situation between 1790 and 1860 is identified as the crucial period when the exactness (...) of the exact sciences as well as the notion of accuracy in the humanities start to diverge from one another in order to develop an epistemic virtue each on its own. (shrink)

This article discusses the definitions of ‘‘measurement uncertainty” given in the three editions of the International Vocabulary of Metrology (VIM) and a fourth definition which was suggested for the next edition of this document. It is argued that none of the definitions is satisfying. First, a thorough definition of measurement uncertainty should supply an explanation about the meaning of the concept, which is missing from the VIM2&3. Secondly, when provided, the meanings are not accurate enough: the VIM1 version is (...) flawed and the possible future definition appeals to an overly restrictive notion of ‘‘belief”. Alternative options are then proposed, based on the conclusions that (i) measurement uncertainty is a statement – an inference – made by the experimenter about the measurand; (ii) it is only based on what is accessible to one’s knowledge, and therefore rests on the hypothesis that no unknown systematic error affects the measurement. (shrink)

[ENGLISH] The present article is a contribution to the development of metrological structural realism. This position of philosophy of science goes back to Matthias Neuber, who introduces it as a third variation of the main structural realisms: epistemic structural realism and ontic structural realism. Here, Neuber attempts to tackle the problems of OSR and ESR while preserving their respective strengths. Of central importance to his approach, are the concepts of invariance, structure and, especially, measurement. Starting from Eino Kaila’s „non-linguistic, realist (...) account of logical empricism“, the present article investigates the necessity of yet another position of structural realism. The established structural realisms are examined for their strengths and weaknesses. Afterwards, the requirements on MSR are formulated in a way that extends beyond Neuber’s account. These requirements are of ontological, epistemological and metrological nature. -/- [DEUTSCH] Der vorliegende Aufsatz ist ein Beitrag zur Entwicklung des Metrologischen Strukturenrealismus. Diese Wissenschaftstheoretische Position geht auf Matthias Neuber zurück, der sie als dritte Spielart zwischen den großen Strukturenrealismen – dem Epistemischen Strukturenrealismus und dem Ontischen Strukturenrealismus – ansiedelt. Neuber versucht, die wissenschaftstheoretischen Probleme von ESR und OSR anzugehen, gleichzeitig aber ihre jeweiligen Stärken beizubehalten. Dabei sind die Konzepte der Invarianz, der Struktur und besonders der Messung von zentraler Bedeutung. Ausgehend von Eino Kailas „non-linguistic, realist account of logical empiricism“ untersucht der vorliegende Aufsatz die Notwendigkeit einer weiteren strukturenrealistischen Position. Dazu werden die etablierten Strukturenrealismen auf ihre Stärken und Schwächen hin untersucht. Es folgt eine Ausformulierung der Forderungen an den MSR, die über die Darstellung bei Neuber hinaus geht. Diese Forderungen sind ontologischer, epistemischer und metrologischer Natur. (shrink)

Academia’s mathematical metaphysics are briefly explored en route to an elaboration of the qualitatively rigorous requirements underpinning the calibration and unambiguous interpretation of quantitative instrumentation in any science. Of particular interest are Gadamer’s emphases on number as the paradigm of the noetic, on the role of play in interpretation, and on Hegel’s sense of method as the activity of the thing itself that thought experiences. These point toward and overlap with (1) Latour’s study of the metrological social networks through which (...) technological phenomena are brought into language as modes of being that can be understood, and (2) the way that Rasch’s models for measurement comprise a potential beginning for metaphysically astute, qualitatively and quantitatively integrated, mathematical methods in the social sciences. The paper closes with observations on the general problem that is philosophy, the need to remain open to multiplicities of meaning even as clear understandings are sought and obtained. (shrink)

The metrology literature neglects a strong empirical measurement tradition in economics, which is different from the traditions as accounted for by the formalist representational theory of measurement. This empirical tradition comes closest to Mari's characterization of measurement in which he describes measurement results as informationally adequate to given goals. In economics, one has to deal with soft systems, which induces problems of invariance and of self-awareness. It will be shown that in the empirical economic measurement tradition both problems have (...) been on the agenda for a long while, and that the proposed solutions to these problems provide clues for the directions in which one could develop a measurement theory that takes account of soft systems. (shrink)

The science of metrology characterizes the concept of precision in exceptionally loose and open terms. That is because the details of the concept must be filled in—what I call narrowing of the concept—in ways that are sensitive to the details of a particular measurement or measurement system and its use. Since these details can never be filled in completely, the concept of the actual precision of an instrument system must always retain some of the openness of its general characterization. (...) The idea that there is something that counts as the actual precision of a measurement system must therefore always remain an idealization, a conclusion that would appear to hold very broadly for terms and the concepts they express. (shrink)

Students of ancient metrology have long since been acquainted with a short tract, though so far none seems to have been aware of the fact that it has been published in four different versions: Themanuale legum, orHexabiblos, of Constantine Harmenopulos, a Byzantine compilation dating from 1345 and transmitted in a great number of manuscripts, has been published a number of times since theeditio princepsof 1540; the most accessible edition, with Latin translation and some notes, is that of Heimbach. In (...) book 2 ch. 4, there appears a page-long metrological table, purporting to derive from an architect Julian of Ascalon, according to the editors not attested elsewhere. The text in the still basic collection of F. Hultsch,Metrologici scriptores i. 54 ff.; 200 f., on which all students of ancient metrology depend, derives from this authority. Though there is nothing in the text of Harmenopulos that indicates the end of his excerpt of Julian, it is implicit in the discussions of modern scholars that only the metrological table is Julian's work and that the paragraphs devoted to building laws which follow it derive from a different source. (shrink)

Paragraph 50 of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigationsfamously says that there is one thing of which one can neither state that it is 1 m long nor that it isn't: the standard metre in Paris. Consensus appears to be that (1) exegetically speaking, Wittgenstein affirms this claim, and (2) systematically, whether or not one agrees with it, the practice of using a material artefact as a measurement standard has important philosophical consequences. In this paper, in contrast, we show that (1') Wittgenstein does not (...) affirm the standard metre claim and (2') historical facts about material length standards do not warrant deeper philosophical conclusions. References to material measurement standards in the literature gravely distort the actual metrological practices of developing and using such standards. (shrink)

Chronostratigraphy is the subfield of geology that studies the relative age of rock strata and that aims at producing a hierarchical classification of (global) divisions of the historical time-rock record. The ‘golden spike’ or ‘GSSP’ approach is the cornerstone of contemporary chronostratigraphic methodology. It is also perplexing. Chronostratigraphers define each global time-rock boundary extremely locally, often by driving a gold-colored pin into an exposed rock section at a particular level. Moreover, they usually avoid rock sections that show any meaningful sign (...) of paleontological disruption or geological discontinuity: the less obvious the boundary, the better. It has been argued that we can make sense of this practice of marking boundaries by comparing the status and function of golden spikes to that of other concrete, particular reference standards from other sciences: holotypes from biological taxonomy and measurement prototypes from the metrology of weight and measures. Alisa Bokulich (2020b) has argued that these ‘scientific types’ are in an important sense one of a kind: they have a common status and function. I will argue that this picture of high-level conceptual unity is mistaken and fails to consider the diversity of aims and purposes of standardization and classification across the sciences. I develop an alternative, disunified account of scientific types that shows how differences in ontological attitudes and epistemic aims inform scientists’ choices between different kinds of scientific types. This perspective on scientific types helps to make sense of an intriguing mid-twentieth-century debate among chronostratigraphers about the very nature of their enterprise. Should chronostratigraphers conventionally make boundaries by designating golden spikes, or should they attempt to mark pre-existing ‘natural’ boundaries with the help of a different kind of scientific type? (shrink)

Measurement is a process aimed at acquiring and codifying information about properties of empirical entities. In this paper we provide an interpretation of such a process comparing it with what is nowadays considered the standard measurement theory, i.e., representational theory of measurement. It is maintained here that this theory has its own merits but it is incomplete and too abstract, its main weakness being the scant attention reserved to the empirical side of measurement, i.e., to measurement systems and to the (...) ways in which the interactions of such systems with the entities under measurement provide a structure to an empirical domain. In particular it is claimed that (1) it is on the ground of the interaction with a measurement system that a partition can be induced on the domain of entities under measurement and that relations among such entities can be established, and that (2) it is the usage of measurement systems that guarantees a degree of objectivity and intersubjectivity to measurement results. As modeled in this paper, measurement systems link the abstract theory of measuring, as developed in representational terms, and the practice of measuring, as coded in standard documents such as the International Vocabulary of Metrology. (shrink)

Peirce's Sign Theory, or Semiotic, is an account of signification, representation, reference and meaning. Although sign theories have a long history, Peirce's accounts are distinctive and innovative for their breadth and complexity, and for capturing the importance of interpretation to signification. For Peirce, developing a thoroughgoing theory of signs was a central philosophical and intellectual preoccupation. The importance of semiotic for Peirce is wide ranging. As he himself said, “[…] it has never been in my power to study anything,—mathematics, ethics, (...) metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semiotic”. (SS 1977, 85–6). Peirce also treated sign theory as central to his work on logic, as the medium for inquiry and the process of scientific discovery, and even as one possible means for 'proving' his pragmatism. Its importance in Peirce's philosophy, then, cannot be underestimated. -/- Across the course of his intellectual life, Peirce continually returned to and developed his ideas about signs and semiotic and there are three broadly delineable accounts: a concise Early Account from the 1860s; a complete and relatively neat Interim Account developed through the 1880s and 1890s and presented in 1903; and his speculative, rambling, and incomplete Final Account developed between 1906 and 1910. The following entry examines these three accounts, and traces the changes that led Peirce to develop earlier accounts and generate new, more complex, sign theories. However, despite these changes, Peirce's ideas on the basic structure of signs and signification remain largely uniform throughout his developments. Consequently, it is useful to begin with an account of the basic structure of signs according to Peirce. (shrink)

Estimating the length of the Greek stadion remains controversial. This paper highlights the pitfalls of a purely metrological approach to this problem and proposes a formal differentiation between metrologically defined ancient measuring units and other measures used to estimate long distances. The common-sense approach to the problem is strengthened by some cross-over documentary evidence for usage of the so-called itinerary stadion in antiquity. We discuss the possibility of using statistical analysis methods to estimate the length of the stadion by comparing (...) ancient routes with the actual distances. Simple numerical examples explain the limits of this approach, caused by the low number of data and by their mixed character. A special case of distances which can be calculated with the help of coordinates given in Ptolemy’s Geography is discussed, and has been shown to lead unavoidably to ambiguous solutions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique by Nathan BrownGreg EllermannBrown, Nathan. Rationalist Empiricism: A Theory of Speculative Critique. Fordham University Press, 2021. 318pp.Nathan Brown's Rationalist Empiricism is, above all, a book about philosophical method. It is also a highly significant study of the conceptual architecture of Marxism, developed by way of a critical return to the lesson of Althusser. Drawing on a range of disparate materials–from the (...) works of Descartes, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and Meillassoux to contemporary experiments in digital photography and metrology–Brown demonstrates the necessity of "a mutual interruption of reason and experience" (31) for any theoretical or political practice that would avoid falling into ideological complacency.The book opens with an appraisal of "the speculative turn" (1) in 21st-century thought, a turn Brown characterizes as an intellectual dead-end. He remarks that the various new materialisms and object-oriented ontologies of the last decades were united by an inattention to method. Unconcerned to establish the necessity of their claims or with the relation between reasoning and reality, these philosophies made assertions instead of arguments; they mistook dogmatism for speculation.For Brown, it is the dialectic–specifically, the dialectic of reason and experience–that promises to renew the possibility of speculative thinking. Such renewal will entail refusing "the severance of speculation from critique" (2). It also requires thinking through a more basic problem: the relation between rationalism and empiricism. While rationalism "explore[s] what has to be thought according to the internal order and consistency of ideas," empiricism, as Brown has it, "claim[s] the genesis of ideas in experience" (3). Since Kant's first Critique, this binary and the effort to overcome it have set the terms of philosophical debate. Brown's striking contention is that the search for a synthesis or a hidden ground uniting these two positions (as, for instance, in Deleuze or Michel Henry) invariably leads us back to the transcendental–an improvement on the dogmatism of contemporary theory but a reduction of knowledge to "conditions of experience" [End Page 128] nonetheless (47). Brown therefore proposes another path: "a relational disjunction of rationalism and empiricism" animated by "the critical power of the tension between [them] to check one another's claims and to propel those claims further" (3). In other words, he develops a methodological dialectic whose two poles-the rationalist and the empiricist-alternately take on speculative and critical functions. There is no static alignment of the key categories in Brown's book. "Speculation and critique cannot be parceled out," he writes, "according to the division of reason and experience. Metaphysics, science, politics: each of these fields relies integrally upon the conflict and complementarity of reason and experience, their 'epistemological polarity'" (250). In Bachelard's terms, pivotal for the overall argument, reason and experience must be allowed to "transmute," "propel," and "say 'no' to one another" (8). It is their ungrounded dialectical relation that sustains true speculative thought.This methodological position has profound ontological implications. Looking to Althusser, Brown finds the beginnings of a theory of rationalist empiricism in the structural Marxist notion of the "concrete-in-thought" (15-16): the self-critical and experimentally verified knowledge of a science. Crucially, for Althusser there can be no concrete-in-thought without a "concrete-real," external to theory itself (15). Developing to the fullest this underappreciated point, Brown shows that rationalist empiricism must be a realism. Thus, the book's second, third, and fourth chapters elaborate a continuous argument concerning "the primacy of being over thought" (59), and the relationship between speculative and scientific knowledge. The central question is how speculation might extend or "extrapolate from the exteriorizing force of science, without being reducible to its forms of experience" (261). Refracting Hegel's Logic through the thought of Heidegger and Meillassoux, Brown ultimately offers a new account of the ontological difference–between being and beings, between speculative truth and "ontic," scientific knowledge–that privileges neither side and insists on their coordination. Once again, he declines to seek a synthesis, arguing that "true critique" (as Hegel characterized his speculative method) depends on "the ontological primacy of becoming" (91), on an absolute time bound up with... (shrink)

In the last few decades the role played by models and modeling activities has become a central topic in the scientific enterprise. In particular, it has been highlighted both that the development of models constitutes a crucial step for understanding the world and that the developed models operate as mediators between theories and the world. Such perspective is exploited here to cope with the issue as to whether error-based and uncertainty-based modeling of measurement are incompatible, and thus alternative with one (...) another, as sometimes claimed nowadays. The crucial problem is whether assuming this standpoint implies definitely renouncing to maintain a role for truth and the related concepts, particularly accuracy, in measurement. It is argued here that the well known objections against true values in measurement, which would lead to refuse the concept of accuracy as non-operational, or to maintain it as only qualitative, derive from a not clear distinction between three distinct processes: the metrological characterization of measuring systems, their calibration, and finally measurement. Under the hypotheses that (1) the concept of true value is related to the model of a measurement process, (2) the concept of uncertainty is related to the connection between such model and the world, and (3) accuracy is a property of measuring systems (and not of measurement results) and uncertainty is a property of measurement results (and not of measuring systems), not only the compatibility but actually the conjoint need of error-based and uncertainty-based modeling emerges. (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the analysis of technological zones. A technological zone can be understood as a space within which differences between technical practices, procedures and forms have been reduced, or common standards have been established. Such technological zones take broadly one of three forms: (1) metrological zones associated with the development of common forms of measurement; (2) infrastructural zones associated with the creation of common connection standards; and (3) zones of qualification which come into being when objects (...) and practices are assessed according to common standards and criteria. The article argues that technological zones can have more or less clear borders, but such borders increasingly do not correspond to the borders of nation-states. Through a discussion of the global oil industry, some of the ways in which the formation of technological zones has become critical to contemporary economic and political life are examined. (shrink)

Since summer 2019 there is a new document that defines what in science should be regarded as being one second, one meter, and one kilogram, respectively. It is the ninth edition of the SI Brochure. Compared with older editions, a new definitional approach has been used. The seven base units are now defined by being directly related to a so-called defining constant. The paper discusses the second, the meter, and the kilogram. One odd salient, but nonetheless not discussed, feature of (...) the formulations of the definitions is that, from a purely linguistic point of view, they are circular. That is, symbols for what is to be defined appear also in the defining expressions. However, underneath the circularities there are, appearances notwithstanding, substantially non-circular definitions. The aim of the paper is to uncover these never before presented definitional structures. It is made by means of the two notions absolutely discrete quantities and metrical coordinative definitions. When the true definitional structures become visible, two important substantial metrological facts can be seen. First, the new definition of the kilogram is very much in need of further discussion. Second, contrary to what the Brochure hints at, there is no need to try to exchange the atomic parameter used in the definition of the second. (shrink)

In 1798, the National Institute and the French minister of foreign relations invited European countries to send delegations of science practitioners to Paris to finalise the values of the metre and the kilogram. This article reads the event as part of a wider attempt to establish the political relevance of international scientific consensus and include scientific exchanges in the diplomatic culture of post-revolutionary Europe. At the end of the 18th century, the scope and methods of both the sciences and diplomacy (...) were being renegotiated. French academicians hoped that the new system of weights and measures would at once facilitate international scientific exchanges and advertise that new authority should be politically invested in savants. During the Directory, part of the political elite hoped to stabilise the Revolution and forge an international order where the Republic could coexist with old regime monarchies. This entailed focusing diplomatic negotiations on commercial development, something a shared metrological system could foster. The conference was the product of the alliance between the two groups. Foreign responses to the project reveal the novelty of the association between scientific discussions and diplomatic negotiations. Furthermore, European savants and governments did not agree that metrological reforms fell primarily under the expertise of science practitioners, rather than under that of trading actors or administrators. The conference did not produce consensus on the suitability of the metric system or on the feasibility of programmes for the unification of weights and measures. It was more successful at promoting precision and rationality as key parameters to assess metrological systems and science practitioners as main experts in the matter. (shrink)

The development of ancient civilizations and their achievements in sciences such as mathematics and astronomy are well researched for script-using civilizations. On the basis of oral tradition and mnemonic artifacts illiterate ancient civilizations were able to attain an adequate level of knowledge. The Neolithic and Bronze Age earthworks and circles are such mnemonic artifacts. Explanatory models are given for the shape of the stone formations and the ditch of Stonehenge reflecting the circular and specific non-circular shapes of these structures. The (...) basic mathematical concepts are Pythagorean triangles, thus adopting the construction procedures of the Neolithic circular ditches of Central Europe in the fifth Millennium bc and later earthworks and stone circles in Britain and Brittany. This knowledge was extended with new elliptical concepts. Approximations for the values of π and the square root of 2 are encoded in the henge. All constructions were performed using a standardized “Babylonian” metrology that shows a remarkable consistency and comprehensible development over some 14 centuries. (shrink)

This paper discusses a relational modeling of measurement which is complementary to the standard representational point of view: by focusing on the experimental character of the measurand-related comparison between objects, this modeling emphasizes the role of the measuring systems as the devices which operatively perform such a comparison. The non-idealities of the operation are formalized in terms of non-transitivity of the substitutability relation between measured objects, due to the uncertainty on the measurand value remaining after the measurement. The metrological structure (...) of traceability is shown to be an effective solution to cope with the problem of the general non-transitivity of measurement results. A preliminary theory is introduced as a possible formalization for the presented model. (shrink)

En este artículo, se atienden ciertas facetas conceptuales y experimentales del efecto Hall cuántico. Se argumenta que el mismo ofrece variados matices para la reflexión filosófica, desde la generación de entidades teóricas hasta la epistemología de la experimentación. La exposición pretende mantener cierta sensibilidad por la dinámica histórica en torno del tema, como así también por las implicaciones metrológicas de ámbitos cuánticos específicos. Dada la enorme producción científica sobre el tema, se hace un recorte a los fines de rescatar algunos (...) perfiles significativos de los fenómenos asociados con ese efecto. In this paper we address several conceptual and historical aspects of the quantum Hall effect. We argue that this effect offers a variety of perspectives for philosophical reflection, from the generation of theoretical entities to the epistemology of experimentation. The exposition attempts to maintain a certain sensitivity to the historical dynamics around the issue, considering at the same time its metrological implications for specific quantum areas. Given the vast scientific literature on the subject, a cut is made in order to rescue some meaningful profiles of the phenomena associated with this effect. (shrink)

Martin Folkes (1690–1754) was Newton's protégé, an English antiquary, mathematician, numismatist and astronomer who would in the latter part of his career become simultaneously president of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. Folkes took a Grand Tour from March 1733 to September 1735, recording the Italian leg of his journey from Padua to Rome in his journal. This paper examines Folkes's travel diary to analyse his Freemasonry, his intellectual development as a Newtonian and his scientific peregrination. It (...) shows how, in this latter area, how he used metrology to understand not only the aesthetics but also the engineering principles of antique buildings and artefacts, as well as their context and place in the Italian landscape. Using Folkes's diary, his account book of his journey in the Norwich archives, and his correspondence with other natural philosophers such as Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), Anders Celsius (1701–1744) and Abbé Antonio Schinella Conti (1667–1749), this paper will also demonstrate to what extent Folkes's journey established his reputation as an international broker of Newtonianism, as well as the overall primacy of English scientific instrumentation to Italian virtuosi. (shrink)

This article develops a historico-critical analysis of uncertainty and accuracy in measurement through a case-study of the adjustment of the fundamental physical constants, in order to investigate the sceptical “problem of unknowability” undermining realist accounts of measurement. Every scientific result must include a “measurement uncertainty”, but uncertainty cannot be be eval- uated against the unknown, and therefore cannot be taken as an assessment of “accuracy”, defined in the metrological vocabulary as the closeness to the truth. The way scientists use and (...) interpret uncertainty in the adjustment activity illustrates how they try to overcome this predicament. I iden- tify two operative roles of measurement uncertainty, in the comparison and in the combination of measurement results. This duality implies a tension between selection and combination when aggregating results, leading to a crucial question: should the evaluation of uncertainties favour safety over precision? I present contrasting answers and identify a specific account of physicists who implicitly try to conciliate realism with the problem of unknowability. I argue that this invites us to reconsider accuracy from a dynamical standpoint, as the gradual achievement of scientific progress through error correction. Finally, I present two interpretations of measurement uncertainty, objective and epistemic, which I criticize and suggest improvements to. (shrink)

There are at least three deep and yet creative tensions in John Locke's writings on the knowledge of the natural world. An exposition of these tensions provides the framework for this chapter. The chapter provides an account of the development of Locke's views from his early medical essays of the late 1660s to his last published writings on natural philosophy. The central locus for Locke's "philosophy of science" will be the Essay. Chymical medicine provided the main field in which Locke (...) was regularly involved in experimentation. Locke believed that geometry and arithmetic presented paradigm examples of the sort of demonstrative reasoning that would be involved in a science of nature, that is, a demonstrative natural philosophy. An important consequence of Locke's ideal of a corpuscular metric is an ongoing concern with metrology. By the early 1690s, Locke modified his views on natural philosophy in the light of the Newtonian achievement. (shrink)

Historians of the sciences have paid great attention to the ways that faith in what has been called the quantitative spirit emerged as a dominant feature of the politics of science, a theme of obvious salience in current epidemiological and climate crises. There are instructive connexions between measurement practices and orientation towards other cultures—as though scientific modernity somehow appeared through the primacy of robust quantification over subaltern, past, and exotic worlds, where merely provisional judgment allegedly still operated. This highly simplistic (...) Orientalist distinction accompanied assumptions that the remote was best understood as the ancient, a viewpoint common at the same late Enlightenment moment as the apparent institutionalisation of the regime of the exact sciences within European polities. Under this regime, precision surveys—the way the state saw—have often been understood as integral for European societies and even more so in colonised territories. This version of what might be called metrological Orientalism can be disoriented through excellent recent scholarship that explores complex entanglements of measurement practices circulating across very different scientific cultures, which shows how precision devices that claimed merely to represent phenomena often helped produce them. Studies of select cases of relations between European practitioners and indigenous experts, in fields such as Egyptian hydraulics or South Pacific surveys, can reveal even more: the role that judgment and exactitude played in forging very different, politically significant versions of the past history of the sciences. These disorientations can aid novel forms of historical understanding of the politics of science. (shrink)