On Measurement (1960-1969)

"No observations are absolutely trustworthy. In no field of observation can we entirely rule out the possibility that an observation is vitiated by a large measurement or execution error. If a reading is found to lie a very long way from its fellows in a series of replicate observations, there must be a suspicion that the deviation is caused by a blunder or gross error of some kind. [...] One sufficiently erroneous reading can wreck the whole of a statistical analysis, however many observations there are." (Francis J Anscombe, "Rejection of Outliers", Technometrics Vol. 2 (2), 1960)

"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, "Vegetable Staticks", 1961)

"Probabilities must be regarded as analogous to the measurement of physical magnitudes; that is to say, they can never be known exactly, but only within certain approximation." (Félix E Borel, "Probabilities and Life", 1962)

"The operations and measurements that a scientist undertakes in the laboratory are not 'the given' of experience but rather 'the collected with difficulty'. They are not what the scientist sees - at least not before his research is well advanced and his attention focused. [...] Science does not deal in all possible laboratory manipulations. Instead, it selects those relevant to the juxtaposition of a paradigm with the immediate experience that that paradigm has partially determined." (Thomas S Kuhn, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", 1962)

"Entropy is a measure of the heat energy in a substance that has been lost and is no longer available for work. It is a measure of the deterioration of a system." (William B Sill & Norman Hoss (Eds.), "Popular Science Encyclopedia of the Sciences", 1963)

"If our model is to be at all realistic, it will also need to be rather complex, It will in fact be too complex for easy handling by the traditional analytic measures, even after suitable simplifications." (Charles P Bonini, "Simulation of Information and Decision System in the Firm" , 1963)

"Mathematical statistics provides an exceptionally clear example of the relationship between mathematics and the external world. The external world provides the experimentally measured distribution curve; mathematics provides the equation (the mathematical model) that corresponds to the empirical curve. The statistician may be guided by a thought experiment in finding the corresponding equation." (Marshall J Walker, "The Nature of Scientific Thought", 1963)

"Statistics provides a quantitative example of the scientific process usually described qualitatively by saying that scientists observe nature, study the measurements, postulate models to predict new measurements, and validate the model by the success of prediction." (Marshall J Walker, "The Nature of Scientific Thought", 1963)

"This other world is the so-called physical world image; it is merely an intellectual structure. To a certain extent it is arbitrary. It is a kind of model or idealization created in order to avoid the inaccuracy inherent in every measurement and to facilitate exact definition." (Max Planck, "The Philosophy of Physics", 1963)

"A quantity like time, or any other physical measurement, does not exist in a completely abstract way. We find no sense in talking about something unless we specify how we measure it. It is the definition by the method of measuring a quantity that is the one sure way of avoiding talking nonsense [...]" (Sir Hermann Bondi, "Relativity and Common Sense: A New Approach to Einstein", 1964)

"Measurement, we have seen, always has an element of error in it. The most exact description or prediction that a scientist can make is still only approximate." (Abraham Kaplan, "The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science", 1964)

"Today we preach that science is not science unless it is quantitative. We substitute correlation for causal studies, and physical equations for organic reasoning. Measurements and equations are supposed to sharpen thinking, but [...] they more often tend to make the thinking non-causal and fuzzy." (John R Platt, "Strong Inference", Science Vol. 146 (3641), 1964)

"It is only through refined measurements and careful experimentation that we can have a wider vision. And then we see unexpected things: we see things that are far from what we would guess - far from what we could have imagined. Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." (Richard P Feynman, "The Character of Physical Law", 1965)

"Measurement is the link between mathematics and science." (Brian Ellis, "Basic Concepts of Measurement", 1966)

"To know the quantum mechanical state of a system implies, in general, only statistical restrictions on the results of measurements. It seems interesting to ask if this statistical element be thought of as arising, as in classical statistical mechanics, because the states in question are averages over better defined states for which individually the results would be quite determined. These hypothetical 'dispersion free' states would be specified not only by the quantum mechanical state vector but also by additional 'hidden variables' - 'hidden' because if states with prescribed values of these variables could actually be prepared, quantum mechanics would be observably inadequate." (John S Bell, "On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics" [in "Reviews of Modern Physics"], 1966)

"It is a commonplace of modern technology that there is a high measure of certainty that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved." (John K Galbraith, "The New Industrial State", 1967)

"The aim of science is not so much to search for truth, or even truths, as to classify our knowledge and to establish relations between observable phenomena in order to be able to predict the future in a certain measure and to explain the sequence of phenomena in relation to ourselves." (Pierre L du Noüy, "Between Knowing and Believing", 1967)

"The 'flow of information' through human communication channels is enormous. So far no theory exists, to our knowledge, which attributes any sort of unambiguous measure to this 'flow'." (Anatol Rapoport, "Modern Systems Research for the Behavioral Scientist", 1969)

"The science of statistics is the chief instrumentality through which the progress of civilization is now measured and by which its development hereafter will be largely controlled." (Daniel J Boorstin, "The Decline of Radicalism", 1969)