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Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants PDF Author: James Vincent
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035862
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day. From the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In this revelatory work of science and social history, James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking readers from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the “quantified self.” At every turn, Vincent is keenly attuned to the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control. Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge.

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants

Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants PDF Author: James Vincent
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035862
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day. From the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In this revelatory work of science and social history, James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking readers from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the “quantified self.” At every turn, Vincent is keenly attuned to the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control. Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge.

Beyond Measure

Beyond Measure PDF Author: James Vincent
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780571354221
Category : Measurement
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
A revelatory and vibrant story of measurement which will make you look at the world around you anew.

Milieus of Minutiae

Milieus of Minutiae PDF Author: Elizabeth Brogden
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813950643
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Book Description
The long history of tiny matter(s) in the sciences, thought, and culture From catastrophic weather and steady warming caused by the accumulation of carbon particles in the Earth’s atmosphere to societies brought to a standstill by microscopic viruses, the new millennium has reminded us of how the minutest of phenomena can have outsized effects. This notion is one that has preoccupied the European and Anglo-American cultural imaginary since at least early modernity. Milieus of Minutiae brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to investigate various forms and appearances of minutiae prior to and beyond the advent of magnification. The collection illuminates connections between the empirical practices and technologies with which minutiae have come to be associated and the broader, more diffuse discourses—from the philosophical to the artistic—that have attended theories of smallness before and after Hooke’s Micrographia. Placing essays on Renaissance poetry, Romantic fiction, and matters of punctuation alongside essays on early modern germ theory and the optics of microscopic technology, this rigorously framed volume extends from sixteenth-century pathology to twentieth-century architectural theory, natural science to literature and art.

DataPublics

DataPublics PDF Author: Jannie Møller Hartley
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529228638
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence This book addresses new challenges to the formation of publics in datafied democracies. It proposes a fresh, complex and nuanced approach to understand 'datapublics' by considering datafication and public formation in the context of audience, journalism and infrastructure studies. The tightly woven chapters shed new light on how platforms, algorithms and their data infrastructure are embedded in journalistic values, discourses and practices, opening up new conditions for publics to display agency, mobilize and achieve legitimacy. This is a seminal contribution to debates about the future of media, journalism and civic practices.

Ancient Measurement

Ancient Measurement PDF Author: Roland A Boucher
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781480895362
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 108

Book Description
The Sumerians were not the only ones to reate remarkably accurate standards of measurement in the Ancient world. Some would travel to the ends of the Earth, some would be with us still today. Roland A. Boucher, a licensed professional engineer, examines incredible achievements of the past in this book that highlights standards of measure from the ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Minoans, and others. The Sumerians left two wonderful monuments which demonstrate their system of measurement. The Great Pyramid at Giza, which was built to Sumerian standards with an error of only 185 parts per million; and The Parthenon, in Athens, built 2000 years later to the same Sumerian standard. Filled with tables, formulas, and images to promote the understanding of the mathematical concepts involved, this book celebrates the achievements of the Sumerians and other ancient civilizations. Embark on a journey of discovery as the author recreates eight additional standards from the distant past.

Hope Circuits

Hope Circuits PDF Author: Jessica Riddell
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0228020697
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 187

Book Description
How do we model abundance and generosity – in teaching, in learning, in leading organizations, particularly non-profits – when dealing with fiscal austerity and other forms of scarcity thinking? Hope Circuits explores this question, presenting sophisticated ideas that support democratizing higher education for everybody. Written in a conversational style that draws upon Jessica Riddell’s experience in governance, senior administration, and scholarship, the book is a how-to guide and thought leadership manifesto for developing the conceptual tools to seek solutions to higher education’s most pressing issues. Hope Circuits aims to rewire mindsets, perspectives, and behaviours to in turn rewire and renew the systems within which university stakeholders learn, live, and work. It tackles this challenging feat by suggesting ten tools to build hope circuits, a concept borrowed from neuroscience. Riddell acknowledges that changing systems and deep cultures is not for the faint of heart; indeed, the more than 250 interviews conducted with thought partners for Hope Circuits expose how individuals who navigate complex systems regularly experience discomfort and even despair. In response, she shows us how to anchor a practice of hope in higher education with focus and intention, inviting others to adopt and adapt her approach.

Beyond Measure

Beyond Measure PDF Author: Margaret Heffernan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471141888
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 111

Book Description
A powerful manifesto for CEOs and employees alike, this book reveals how organizations can make huge changes with surprisingly small steps. In an age of 'radical' shifts and 'disruption', business leader Margaret Heffernan lays the groundwork for a new kind of thinking, arguing that organizations can create seismic shifts by making deceptively small changes such as using every mind on the team, celebrating mistakes and encouraging time off from work. A popular TED speaker, Heffernan is a wise and witty storyteller who fully engages her reader at every turn. Filled with incredible anecdotes and startling statistics, she takes us on a fascinating tour across the globe, highlighting disparate business and revealing how they've managed to change themselves in big ways through incremental shifts. How did the CIA revolutionize their intelligence gathering with one simple question? How did one organization increase their revenue by 15 million by instituting a short coffee break? How can a day-long hackathon change the culture of a company? Heffernan investigates all these scenarios and comes to the same conclusion: big improvements can come from simply making small changes.

Whatever Happened to the Metric System?

Whatever Happened to the Metric System? PDF Author: John Bemelmans Marciano
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 160819941X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 418

Book Description
The intriguing tale of why the United States has never adopted the metric system, and what that says about us. The American standard system of measurement is a unique and odd thing to behold with its esoteric, inconsistent standards: twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, sixteen ounces in a pound, one hundred pennies to the dollar. For something as elemental as counting and estimating the world around us, it seems like a confusing tool to use. So how did we end up with it? Most of the rest of the world is on the metric system, and for a time in the 1970s America appeared ready to make the switch. Yet it never happened, and the reasons for that get to the root of who we think we are, just as the measurements are woven into the ways we think. John Marciano chronicles the origins of measurement systems, the kaleidoscopic array of standards throughout Europe and the thirteen American colonies, the combination of intellect and circumstance that resulted in the metric system's creation in France in the wake of the French Revolution, and America's stubborn adherence to the hybrid United States Customary System ever since. As much as it is a tale of quarters and tenths, it is a human drama, replete with great inventors, visionary presidents, obsessive activists, and science-loving technocrats. Anyone who reads this inquisitive, engaging story will never read Robert Frost's line “miles to go before I sleep” or eat a foot-long sub again without wondering, Whatever happened to the metric system?

An Instinct for Truth

An Instinct for Truth PDF Author: Robert T. Pennock
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262042584
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
An exploration of the scientific mindset—such character virtues as curiosity, veracity, attentiveness, and humility to evidence—and its importance for science, democracy, and human flourishing. Exemplary scientists have a characteristic way of viewing the world and their work: their mindset and methods all aim at discovering truths about nature. In An Instinct for Truth, Robert Pennock explores this scientific mindset and argues that what Charles Darwin called “an instinct for truth, knowledge, and discovery” has a tacit moral structure—that it is important not only for scientific excellence and integrity but also for democracy and human flourishing. In an era of “post-truth,” the scientific drive to discover empirical truths has a special value. Taking a virtue-theoretic perspective, Pennock explores curiosity, veracity, skepticism, humility to evidence, and other scientific virtues and vices. He explains that curiosity is the most distinctive element of the scientific character, by which other norms are shaped; discusses the passionate nature of scientific attentiveness; and calls for science education not only to teach scientific findings and methods but also to nurture the scientific mindset and its core values. Drawing on historical sources as well as a sociological study of more than a thousand scientists, Pennock's philosophical account is grounded in values that scientists themselves recognize they should aspire to. Pennock argues that epistemic and ethical values are normatively interconnected, and that for science and society to flourish, we need not just a philosophy of science, but a philosophy of the scientist.

Electrodynamics from Ampère to Einstein

Electrodynamics from Ampère to Einstein PDF Author: Olivier Darrigol
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198505938
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 566

Book Description
This book recounts the developments of fundamental electrodynamics from Ampère's investigation of the forces between electric currents to Einstein's introduction of a new doctrine of space and time. The emphasis is on the diverse, evolving practices of electrodynamics and the interactions between the corresponding scientific traditions. A richly documented, clearly written, and abundantly illustrated history of the subject.