Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

by James Vincent

Peirce’s experiences with imprecision in measurement only consolidated this view: that the world was full of inaccuracies, and that even our best attempts to establish a solid foundation for truth were fragile and liable to fail. ‘We never can be absolutely sure of anything, nor can we with any probability ascertain the exact value of any measure,’ he laments in one unpublished manuscript.34 This attitude – combining an urgent desire for facts with an acceptance of their fallibility – makes Peirce something close to a patron saint of metrology; someone whose character and work captures the deep antagonism at the heart of the subject. The fact is that the more we measure, the more mistakes we find; the harder we try to bear down on the truth, the more we reveal the inadequacies of our assumptions. We push and push on the knowledge and equipment we have until finally – snap! – the pencil breaks, the glass cracks, the line tears, and we are sent spinning into the void again, hoping to rebuild what we know from scratch with our own hands and eyes.