Measurement

I have measured out my life in coffee spoons...
— T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965), The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 51.

 

Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark
— Holy Bible, Deuteronomy, 27:17.

 

Also he made a molten sea of ten cubits from brim to brim, round in compass, and five cubits the height thereof; and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
— II Chronicles 4:2.

 

A false balance is an abomination to the Lord: but a just weight is his delight.
— Holy Bible, Proverbs 11:1.

 

Since we are assured that the all-wise Creator has observed the most exact proportions, of number, weight and measure, in the make of all things, the most likely way, therefore, to get any insight into the nature of those parts of the creation, which come within our observation, must in all reason be to number, weigh and measure.
— Stephen Hales (1677 – 1761), quoted by Paul Davies in The Mind of God, Penguin Books, 1990, 144.

 

Throughout the kingdom there shall be standard measures of wine, ale and corn. Also there shall be a standard width of dyed cloth, russet, and halberject; namely [a width of] two ells within the selvedges. Weights [also] are to be standardised similarly.
— Magna Carta, signed June 15, 1215 A.D.

 

Of course it will soak through at last, as all great scientific truths do — such as the doctrine of Natural Selection and the peculiar properties of the stuff called Ether, not to speak of Magna Carta, which even the poorest scavenger in the street to-day reveres as the origin of his freedom.
— Hilaire Belloc (1870 – 1953), ‘Talking of the Nordic Man’ in Stories Essays and Poems, Everyman Library 948, 1957, 50.

 

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, or with the breadth of his hand marked off the heavens? Who has held the dust of the earth in a basket or weighed the mountains on the scales or the hills in a balance?
— Holy Bible, Isaiah 40:12, New International Version.

 

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
— William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], Lecture to the Institution of Civil Engineers, 1883.

 

Whether or not a thing is measurable is not something to be decided a priori by thought alone, but something to be decided only by experiment.
— Richard Feynman (1918 – 1988), The Feynman Lectures on Physics, 1963.

 

Bischoff, one of the leading anatomists of Europe, thrived some 70 years ago. He carefully measured brain weights, and after many years’ accumulation of much data he observed that the average weight of a man’s brain was 1350 grams, that of a woman only 1250 grams. This at once, he argued, was infallible proof of the mental superiority of men over women. Throughout his life, he defended this hypothesis with the conviction of a zealot. Being the true scientist, he specified in his will that his own brain be added to his impressive collection. The postmortem examination elicited the interesting fact that his own brain weighed only 1245 grams.
— Scientific American, March 1992, 8, quoting from an unidentified source in Scientific American, March 1942.

 

Puck: I’ll put a girdle round about the earth,
In forty minutes.
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), Midsummer Night’s Dream, II. i. 175-6.

 

We must remember that measures were made for man and not man for measures
— Isaac Asimov ( – 1992), Of Time and Space and Other Things, 1965.

 

The island is triangular in its form, and one of its sides is opposite to Gaul … This side extends about 500 miles. Another side lies toward Spain and the west, on which part is Ireland, less, as is reckoned, than Britain, by one half: but the passage [from it] into Britain is of equal distance with that from Gaul … by accurate measurements with water, we perceived the nights to be shorter there than on the continent. The length of this side, as their account states, is 700 miles. The third side … is considered to be 800 miles in length. Thus the whole island is 2,000 miles in circumference.
— Julius Caesar (c. 101 – 44 BCE), describing Britain.

 

BRITAIN, an island in the ocean, formerly called Albion, is situated between the north and west, facing, though at a considerable distance, the coasts of Germany, France, and Spain, which form the greatest part of Europe. It extends 800 miles in length towards the north, and is 200 miles in breadth, except where several promontories extend further in breadth, by which its compass is made to be 3675 miles …

There is also a great abundance of cockles, of which the scarlet dye is made; a most beautiful colour, which never fades with the heat of the sun or the washing of the rain; but the older it is, the more beautiful it becomes. It has both salt and hot springs, and from them flow rivers which furnish hot baths, proper for all ages and sexes, and arranged according. For water, as St. Basil says, receives the heating quality, when it runs along certain metals, and becomes not only hot but scalding. Britain has also many veins of metals, as copper, iron, lead, and silver; it has much and excellent jet, which is black and sparkling, glittering at the fire, and when heated, drives away serpents; being warmed with rubbing, it holds fast whatever is applied to it, like amber.
— The Venerable Bede (c. 673 – 735), The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, chapter 1.

 

How long is the coast of Britain?
To introduce a first category of fractals, namely curves whose fractal dimension is greater than 1, consider a stretch of coastline. It is evident that its length is at least equal to the length measured along a straight line between its beginning and its end. However, the typical coastline is irregular and winding, and there is no question it is much greater than the straight line between its end points.

… coastline length turns out to be an elusive notion that slips between the fingers of one who wants to grasp it. All measurement methods ultimately lead to the conclusion that the typical coastline’s length is very large and so ill determined that it is best considered infinite. Hence, if one wishes to compare different coastlines from the viewpoint of their “extent”, length is an inadequate concept.
— Benoît B. Mandelbrot (1924 – 2010), New Scientist, 14 September 1991, 62.

 

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