The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science
The Function of Measurement in Modern Physical Science
复制标题
测量在现代物理科学中的作用
作者：
T. Kuhn
在芝加哥大学，社会科学研究大楼的正面承载着开尔文勋爵的名言：“如果你不能衡量，你的知识是贫乏和不令人满意的。“如果这句话不是由物理学家写的，而是由社会学家、政治学家或经济学家写的，它还会存在吗？或者，如果不是因为现代物理科学的声望以及测量在其研究中如此明显地占据了很大的比重，像“读阅读”和“标尺”这样的术语会在当代关于认识论和科学方法的讨论中如此频繁地出现吗？我怀疑这两个问题的答案都是否定的，我发现我在这次会议上的角色特别具有挑战性。由于物理科学经常被看作是可靠知识的典范，而且定量技术似乎为它的成功提供了一条重要的线索，因此，在过去的三个世纪里，测量在物理科学中实际上是如何发挥作用的，这个问题引起的不仅仅是它的自然和内在的兴趣。因此，让我在开始时阐明我的一般立场。作为一名前物理学家和一名物理科学历史学家，我确信，至少在世纪以来，定量方法确实是我所研究领域发展的核心。另一方面，我同样相信，我们关于测量的功能及其特殊功效的来源的最普遍的观念，在很大程度上都来自神话。部分是因为这个信念，部分是因为更多的自传原因，我将在这篇论文中采用一种与本次会议的大多数其他撰稿人截然不同的方法。直到接近尾声时，我的文章才叙述自中世纪结束以来物理科学中数量技术的日益发展。相反，
AT the University of Chicago, the facade of the Social Science Research Building bears Lord Kelvin's famous dictum: "If you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory."' Would that statement be there if it had been written, not by a physicist, but by a sociologist, political scientist, or economist? Or again, would terms like "meter reading" and "yardstick" recur so frequently in contemporary discussions of epistemology and scientific method were it not for the prestige of modern physical science and the fact that measurement so obviously bulks large in its research? Suspecting that the answer to both these questions is no, I find my assigned role in this conference particularly challenging. Because physical science is so often seen as the paradigm of sound knowledge and because quantitative techniques seem to provide an essential clue to its success, the question how measurement has actually functioned for the past three centuries in physical science arouses more than its natural and intrinsic interest. Let me therefore make my general position clear at the start. Both as an ex-physicist and as an historian of physical science I feel sure that, for at least a century and a half, quantitative methods have indeed been central to the development of the fields I study. On the other hand, I feel equally convinced that our most prevalent notions both about the function of measurement and about the source of its special efficacy are derived largely from myth. Partly because of this conviction and partly for more autobiographical reasons,2 I shall employ in this paper an approach rather different from that of most other contributors to this conference. Until almost its close my essay will include no narrative of the increasing deployment of quantitative techniques in physical science since the close of the Middle Ages. Instead, the two