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

by James Vincent

The contemporary philosopher Bruno Latour refers to this process as ‘blackboxing’ – the method by which ‘scientific and technical work is made invisible by its own success’. When scientific knowledge becomes a black box, it means we discard the context of its creation. We ignore the human errors, alternative theories, and invisible bodges that are just part and parcel of experimentation, and strip away these uncertainties until only the input and output of the work remain.44 Everything else is hidden by the black box. This process enhances the authority of science, removing the mess and contingency of research so that results seem singular and objective. It also obscures criticism of the scientific process, hiding controversial or arbitrary decisions. Think about debates about climate change, for example, and how they’ve stressed the need to limit increases in global temperature to less than 2ºC of warming. This is obviously a somewhat arbitrary figure, and the projected outcomes associated with it are far from certain. Things could go a little better or they could go a lot worse. Blackboxing this process creates a clear goal for policymakers and public discussions, but it also gives ammo to conspiracy theorists and ‘sceptics’ who believe some wonderful truth about the Earth’s future is being hidden.