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Foreword
The idea of measurement standards seems to be as old as our civilization. The documented history of measurements started ca. 3000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and China, where the needs related to the land management and construction of
buildings motivated the invention of the first standards of length, area, volume, and
weight, which next—for centuries—played a very important role in trade, commerce, government, and even religion. The mythical history of measurement is
much longer: according to a first-century Romano-Jewish historian Titus Flavius
Josephus, it was biblical Cain who invented weights and measures. After having
killed his brother Abel, he went on to commit many other sins, including this terrible innovation “that changed a world of innocent and noble simplicity, in which
people had hitherto lived without such systems, into one forever filled with
dishonesty”.
1
Paradoxically, the scientists of the twenty-first century are more likely
to agree with Titus Flavius Josephus than their predecessors because they have
fallen prey to bureaucratic systems of research evaluation based on bibliometric
indicators, allegedly being measures of research quality….
The authors of the book Measurement Across the Sciences have made an attempt
to identify a set of basic conditions necessary for measurement, which could be
acceptable for most researchers and practitioners active in various areas of measurement application, including both physics and experimental psychology. They have
tried, moreover, to find some complementary conditions which are sufficient for
correct characterization of measurement. In this way, they have contributed to the
endeavors of great methodological significance, viz. to the endeavors aimed at
drawing a demarcation line between measurements and measurement-like operations. This is a challenge comparable with that of the demarcation problem in the
philosophy of science, i.e., the problem of criteria for distinguishing science from
pseudoscience. Moreover, this seems to be an urgent task in the times when the
creative minds of technoscientific milieus are exposed to the influence of simplistic
1 Cited after Kula, W. (1986). Measures and men. Princeton (NJ, USA): Princeton University Press
(translated from Polish by R. Szreter), p. 3.
Foreword
The idea of measurement standards seems to be as old as our civilization. The documented history of measurements started ca. 3000 years ago in Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and China, where the needs related to the land management and construction of
buildings motivated the invention of the first standards of length, area, volume, and
weight, which next—for centuries—played a very important role in trade, commerce, government, and even religion. The mythical history of measurement is
much longer: according to a first-century Romano-Jewish historian Titus Flavius
Josephus, it was biblical Cain who invented weights and measures. After having
killed his brother Abel, he went on to commit many other sins, including this terrible innovation “that changed a world of innocent and noble simplicity, in which
people had hitherto lived without such systems, into one forever filled with
dishonesty”.
1
Paradoxically, the scientists of the twenty-first century are more likely
to agree with Titus Flavius Josephus than their predecessors because they have
fallen prey to bureaucratic systems of research evaluation based on bibliometric
indicators, allegedly being measures of research quality….
The authors of the book Measurement Across the Sciences have made an attempt
to identify a set of basic conditions necessary for measurement, which could be
acceptable for most researchers and practitioners active in various areas of measurement application, including both physics and experimental psychology. They have
tried, moreover, to find some complementary conditions which are sufficient for
correct characterization of measurement. In this way, they have contributed to the
endeavors of great methodological significance, viz. to the endeavors aimed at
drawing a demarcation line between measurements and measurement-like operations. This is a challenge comparable with that of the demarcation problem in the
philosophy of science, i.e., the problem of criteria for distinguishing science from
pseudoscience. Moreover, this seems to be an urgent task in the times when the
creative minds of technoscientific milieus are exposed to the influence of simplistic
1 Cited after Kula, W. (1986). Measures and men. Princeton (NJ, USA): Princeton University Press
(translated from Polish by R. Szreter), p. 3.