{"id":36389,"date":"2016-09-05T08:58:47","date_gmt":"2016-09-05T14:58:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=36389"},"modified":"2016-09-05T08:58:47","modified_gmt":"2016-09-05T14:58:47","slug":"measurement-and-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/09\/measurement-and-reality.html","title":{"rendered":"Measurement and Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
\u201cLord Kelvin,\u201d by Hubert von Herkomer (Wikimedia CC public domain)
The mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907), was by no means a fool. \u00a0On the contrary, he was a genuinely\u00a0great scientist, in a multitude of fields. \u00a0President of the Royal Society for more than five years, he was knighted and later ennobled, becoming the first British scientist to join the House of Lords. \u00a0When he died, he was buried in Westminster Abbey beside Sir Isaac Newton. \u00a0A host of physical phenomena and scientific concepts bear his name, including the standard unit of absolute temperature measurement, the \u201ckelvin.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u201cLord Kelvin was so satisfied with this triumph of science that he declared himself to be as certain of the existence of the ether as a man can be about anything. . . . \u00a0\u2018When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. . . .\u2019 \u00a0Thus did Lord Kelvin lay down the law. And though quite wrong, this time he has the support of official modern Science. It is NOT true that when you can measure what you are speaking about, you know something about it. The fact that you can measure something doesn\u2019t even prove that that something exists. . . . \u00a0Take the ether, for example: didn\u2019t they measure the ratio of its elasticity to its density?\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Anthony Standen, Science is a Sacred Cow<\/em> (1950)<\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many years ago, I found the famous 1950 book Science is a Sacred Cow<\/em> in my high school library and read it with fascination. \u00a0Anthony Standen was an Anglo-American chemist who was trained at the University of Oxford and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and who also picked up an advanced degree in entomology from the University of New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u201cLord Kelvin was so satisfied with this triumph of science that he declared himself to be as certain of the existence of the ether as a man can be about anything. . . . \u00a0\u2018When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it. 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