Robert Crease (Stony Brook University)
This talk uses the metric reform to highlight differences between three traditions in the philosophy of measurement — analytic, pragmatic, and continental. These philosophical traditions have different perspectives on science in somewhat the way physicists, chemists, and engineers have different perspectives on atoms: different features are put center-stage, and analyzed in different vocabularies for different ends. These traditions bring different kinds of expertise to the subject of measurement, and scrutinize in detail different features. I analyze the way each tradition would view the looming metric reform, and use this analysis to clarify each tradition's presuppositions, goals and implications.
