Posts Tagged ‘metrology’
“There is nothing more tentative, nothing more empirical (superficially, at least) than the process of establishing an order among things; nothing that demands a sharper eye or a surer, better-articulated language”*
James Vincent on the emergence of earliest writing and its impact on culture, with special attention to the phenomenon of the “list” and its role in the birth of metrology…
Measurement was a crucial organizing principle in ancient Egypt, but metrology itself does not begin with nilometers. To understand its place in human culture, we have to trace its roots back further, to the invention of writing itself. For without writing, no measures can be recorded. The best evidence suggests that the written word was created independently thousands of years ago by a number of different cultures scattered around the world: in Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, China, and Egypt. But it’s in Mesopotamia—present-day Iraq—where the practice is thought to have been invented first.
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There’s some debate over whether this invention of writing enabled the first states to emerge, giving their rulers the ability to oversee and allocate resources, or whether it was the demands of the early states that in turn led to the invention of writing. Either way, the scribal arts offered dramatic new ways to process knowledge, allowing for not only superior organization, but also superior thinking. Some scholars argue that the splitting of noun and number on clay tablets didn’t just allow kings to better track their taxes but was tantamount to a cognitive revolution: a leap forward that allowed humans to abstract and categorize the world around them like never before.
Lists may not seem like cognitive dynamite, but their proliferation appears to have helped develop new modes of thought in early societies, encouraging us to think analytically about the world. “The list relies on discontinuity rather than continuity,” writes anthropologist Jack Goody. “[I]t encourages the ordering of the items, by number, by initial sound, by category, etc. And the existence of boundaries, external and internal, brings greater visibility to categories, at the same time as making them more abstract.”…
More at: “What If… Listicles Are Actually an Ancient Form of Writing and Narrative?” from @jjvincent in @lithub
* Michel Foucault
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As we organize, we might recall that it was on this date in 1872 that the Mary Celeste (often erroneously referred to as Marie Celeste, per a Conan Doyle short story about the ship), an American-registered merchant brigantine, was discovered adrift and deserted in the Atlantic Ocean off the Azores Islands.
The Canadian brigantine Dei Gratia found her in a dishevelled but seaworthy condition under partial sail and with her lifeboat missing. The last entry in her log was dated ten days earlier. She had left New York City for Genoa on November 7 and was still amply provisioned when found. Her cargo of alcohol was intact, and the captain’s and crew’s personal belongings were undisturbed. None of those who had been on board were ever seen or heard from again.
At the salvage hearings in Gibraltar following her recovery, the court’s officers considered various possibilities of foul play, including mutiny by Mary Celeste‘s crew, piracy by the Dei Gratia crew or others, and conspiracy to carry out insurance or salvage fraud. No convincing evidence supported these theories, but unresolved suspicions led to a relatively low salvage award.
The inconclusive nature of the hearings fostered continued speculation as to the nature of the mystery. Hypotheses that have been advanced include the effects on the crew of alcohol fumes rising from the cargo, submarine earthquakes, waterspouts, attack by a giant squid, and paranormal intervention.
After the Gibraltar hearings, Mary Celeste continued in service under new owners. In 1885, her captain deliberately wrecked her off the coast of Haiti as part of an attempted insurance fraud.
The ship in 1861 (source)
“You’re gonna need a bigger boat”*…
We’re running out of names; Elizabeth Gibney explains…
By the 2030s, the world will generate around a yottabyte of data per year — that’s 1024 bytes, or the amount that would fit on DVDs stacked all the way to Mars. Now, the booming growth of the data sphere has prompted the governors of the metric system to agree on new prefixes beyond that magnitude, to describe the outrageously big and small.
Representatives from governments worldwide, meeting at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) outside Paris on 18 November, voted to introduce four new prefixes to the International System of Units (SI) with immediate effect. The prefixes ronna and quetta represent 1027 and 1030, and ronto and quecto signify 10−27 and 10−30. Earth weighs around one ronnagram, and an electron’s mass is about one quectogram.
This is the first update to the prefix system since 1991, when the organization added zetta (1021), zepto (10−21), yotta (1024) and yocto (10−24). In that case, metrologists were adapting to fit the needs of chemists, who wanted a way to express SI units on the scale of Avogadro’s number — the 6 × 1023 units in a mole, a measure of the quantity of substances. The more familiar prefixes peta and exa were added in 1975…
Prolific generation of data drove the need for prefixes that denote 1027 and 1030: “How many yottabytes in a quettabyte? Extreme numbers get new names,” from @LizzieGibney in @Nature.
And in other news from the world of metrics: “Do not adjust your clock: scientists call time on the leap second.”
* Jaws
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As we try to keep up, we might recall that it was on this date in 1968 that 60 Minutes, which had premiered two months earlier, introduced its trademark “ticking stopwatch” opening logo/transition. 60 Minutes is, of course, the most-watched television news show in history.
Since near the show’s inception in 1968, the opening of 60 Minutes features a stopwatch. The Aristo (Heuer) design first appeared in 1978. On October 29, 2006, the background changed to red, the title text color changed to white, and the stopwatch was shifted to the upright position. This version was used from 1992 to 2006 (the Square 721 type was changed in 1998). Source
“I used to measure the skies, now I measure the shadows of Earth”*…
From ancient Egyptian cubits to fitness tracker apps, humankind has long been seeking ever more ways to measure the world – and ourselves…
The discipline of measurement developed for millennia… Around 6,000 years ago, the first standardised units were deployed in river valley civilisations such as ancient Egypt, where the cubit was defined by the length of the human arm, from elbow to the tip of the middle finger, and used to measure out the dimensions of the pyramids. In the Middle Ages, the task of regulating measurement to facilitate trade was both privilege and burden for rulers: a means of exercising power over their subjects, but a trigger for unrest if neglected. As the centuries passed, units multiplied, and in 18th-century France there were said to be some 250,000 variant units in use, leading to the revolutionary demand: “One king, one law, one weight and one measure.”
It was this abundance of measures that led to the creation of the metric system by French savants. A unit like the metre – defined originally as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the north pole – was intended not only to simplify metrology, but also to embody political ideals. Its value and authority were derived not from royal bodies, but scientific calculation, and were thus, supposedly, equal and accessible to all. Then as today, units of measurement are designed to create uniformity across time, space and culture; to enable control at a distance and ensure trust between strangers. What has changed since the time of the pyramids is that now they often span the whole globe.
Despite their abundance, international standards like those mandated by NIST and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) are mostly invisible in our lives. Where measurement does intrude is via bureaucracies of various stripes, particularly in education and the workplace. It’s in school that we are first exposed to the harsh lessons of quantification – where we are sorted by grade and rank and number, and told that these are the measures by which our future success will be gauged…
A fascinating survey of the history of measurement, and a consideration of its consequences: “Made to measure: why we can’t stop quantifying our lives,” from James Vincent (@jjvincent) in @guardian, an excerpt from his new book Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement.
And for a look at what it takes to perfect one of the most fundamental of those measures, see Jeremy Bernstein‘s “The Kilogram.”
* “I used to measure the skies, now I measure the shadows of Earth. Although my mind was sky-bound, the shadow of my body lies here.” – Epitaph Johannes Kepler composed for himself a few months before he died
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As we get out the gauge, we might send thoughtfully-wagered birthday greetings Blaise Pascal; he was born on this date in 1623. A French mathematician, physicist, theologian, and inventor (e.g.,the first digital calculator, the barometer, the hydraulic press, and the syringe), his commitment to empiricism (“experiments are the true teachers which one must follow in physics”) pitted him against his contemporary René “cogito, ergo sum” Descartes– and was foundational in the acceleration of the scientific/rationalist commitment to measurement…
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