Reasoning in Measurement

by Nicola Mößner (Editor), Alfred Nordmann (Editor)

Overview

This collection offers a new understanding of the epistemology of measurement. The interdisciplinary volume explores how measurements are produced, for example, in astronomy and seismology, in studies of human sexuality and ecology, in brain imaging and intelligence testing. It considers photography as a measurement technology and Henry David Thoreau's poetic measures as closing the gap between mind and world.

By focusing on measurements as the hard-won results of conceptual as well as technical operations, the authors of the book no longer presuppose that measurement is always and exclusively a means of representing some feature of a target object or entity. Measurement also provides knowledge about the degree to which things have been standardized or harmonized – it is an indicator of how closely human practices are attuned to each other and the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138331945
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Series:	History and Philosophy of Technoscience
Pages:	274
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Nicola Mößner, Junior Fellow at Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald in Germany. She received her M.A. in German Literature and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Münster. Her thesis is about the epistemology of testimony and the special case of media reports, published as Wissen aus dem Zeugnis anderer – der Sonderfall medialer Berichterstattung (Paderborn: mentis 2010). Currently she works on a research project concerning the epistemic role of visualisations in science. In this context, she edited (together with Dimitri Liebsch) Visualisierung und Erkenntnis – Bildverstehen und Bildverwenden in Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften (Cologne: Herbert von Halem 2012). Her main interests comprise philosophy of science and social epistemology.

Alfred Nordmann, professor of Philosophy at the Technische Universität Darmstadt and adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Nordmann’s interests in the philosophy of science concern the formation and contestation of fields of inquiry such as chemistry and theories of electricity in the 18th century, mechanics, evolutionary biology, and sociology in the 19th century. In particular, he sought to articulate implicit concepts of science and objectivity. In 2000, he embarked on a similar endeavor in regard to nanoscience and converging technologies which has led him to promote and develop a comprehensive philosophy of technoscience. Since the technosciences require new answers to the familiar questions of knowledge and objectivity, theory and evidence, explanation and validation, representation and experimentation, Nordmann is seeking to address these and related questions in his current work.

Table of Contents

1 Epistemological Dimensions of Measurement

Nicola Mößner and Alfred Nordmann

PART I

Founding Figures

2 Of Compass, Chain, and Sounding Line: Taking Thoreau’s Measure

Laura Dassow Walls

3 Operationalism: Old Lessons and New Challenges

Hasok Chang

PART II

Images as Measurements

4 Photo Mensura

Patrick Maynard

5 The Media Aesthetics of Brain Imaging in Popular Science

Liv Hausken

6 Compressed Sensing – A New Mode of Measurement

Thomas Vogt

7 The Altered Image: Composite Figures and Evidential Reasoning with Mechanically Produced Images

Laura Perini

8 Visual Data – Reasons to be Relied on?

Nicola Mößner

9 Pictorial Evidence: On the Rightness of Pictures

Tobias Schöttler

PART III

Measuring the Immeasurable

10 Measurement in Medicine and Beyond: Quality of Life, Blood Pressure and Time

Leah McClimans

11 Measuring Intelligence Effectively: Psychometrics from a Philosophy of Technology Perspective

Andreas Kaminski

12 The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid and the Measurement of Human Sexuality

Donna J. Drucker

13 The Desert and the Dendrograph: Place, Community and Ecological Instrumentation

Emily K. Brock

PART IV

Calibrating Mind and World

14 Scientific Measurement as Cognitive Integration: The Role of Cognitive Integration in the Growth of Scientific Knowledge

Godfrey Guillaumin

15 Measurements in the Engineering Sciences: An Epistemology of Producing Knowledge of Physical Phenomena

Mieke Boon

16 Uncertainty and Modeling in Seismology

Teru Miyake

17 A Model-Based Epistemology of Measurement

Eran Tal

Index