The Problem of Measurement

The Problem of Measurement

Before the foundation of Scientific Positivism, there was confusion among scientists about the value of theory and the principle of immanence of deductivism, which is the favorite branch of astronomers, where scientific knowledge is proven through debates between theorems, corollaries, theories, and principles without proving them in practice in a laboratory, without human contact, without being able to reproduce the theories in a controlled environment, such as, for example, reproducing an earthquake to validate the premises and causes of an earthquake?

So the debate between immanentists and empiricists will continue and both complement each other simply because there is a problem for both that was thought to be solved by introducing instrumental technical measurement, observing reality through calibrated measuring instruments, instead of using sight, hearing, taste, touch to measure temperature, the acidity titrator of a substance to replace the tongue and taste, the clock was introduced to measure time very precisely and in fractions on the Planck scale, and on the other hand also on astronomical scales, but the problem of measurement that Auguste Comte thought to solve reappeared with Heizemberger's uncertainty principle.

Heizemberger's uncertainty principle brought back the issue of the impossibility of obtaining any exact and precise measurement of anything, because the measuring instrument interferes with the object being measured, altering the acuity of the measurement, for example, a thermometer needs to reach thermal equilibrium to record the measurement, and in doing so it alters the temperature of the measured object.

Likewise, the researcher interferes in the measurements collected in an opinion poll, influencing the Bayesian bias due to his intellectual background, his beliefs, his culture, as was clear in the problem of the sociologist-anthropologist Malinovsky in the study for the interpretation of social behavior of the inhabitants of the Trobliand Islands cultures.

The Problem of the Existence of Things

Many things cannot be seen directly, such as atoms, electrons; others will never be seen, such as temperature, air, wind, force; some can only be felt without being seen; others will never even be felt, such as photons, the magnetic field, time.

The most useless question for a scientist is: does it exist?

The answer to the question of whether or not something exists is irrelevant; it is only up to our personal and psychological, or religious, or philosophical conviction.

We could extend this principle of the incoherence of the problem of the existence of things to other sectors of life, since not everything we believe can exist can be seen or even proven directly in the universe because of the temporal dimension and the spatial dimension. Thus, for our human senses and for our cultural beliefs, the two abstract concepts of eternity (infinite time without beginning and without end) and infinity (that which cannot be measured) are unknowable.

Roberto da Silva Rocha, professor universitário e cientista político