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Book Symposium on Robert P. Crease’s World in the Balance: the Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement

W. W. Norton & Company, 2011

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Notes

  1. “GPS Timing Used in Experiment to Measure ‘Faster Than Light’ Particles”: http://www.indsidegnss.com/node/2845

  2. Reference to Goethe is from Goethe’s Letter to Zelter dated June 22, 1808.

  3. (Nietzsche 1997, 60). One should, of course, credit good historians with the talent for drawing on life (here, even life’s resistance to standardization), but only to make better history. My point is that Crease is concerned about carrying current life forward, not just drawing on it.

  4. Crease (2011, pp. 269–71). There is obviously an echo here of Heidegger’s discussion of the ontic (concern for entities) and ontological (concern for the being of entities) in hermeneutic phenomenology (Heidegger 1962, pp. 31–35), but I think Crease is right not to make this reference explicit. He uses Heidegger’s distinction, to be sure, but WB’s themes are only indirectly related to Being and Time’s.

  5. Here again, in Crease’s use of the language of “enframing,” there is a gesture toward Heidegger—this time to the famous “Question of Technology” (Heidegger 2008, pp. 307–41). As with his use of “ontological,” however, I think Crease is wise to leave the reference muted. For Heidegger, the modern metroscape is certainly an aspect of how Gestell eventuates in these times, but it is not equivalent to it.

  6. See, e.g., Pateman (1988), who famously argues that even in liberal democracies, the idea of human freedom is compromised from the start for women by the male-dominant social context in which choices are made. Thus, Rosler’s play asks what women’s freedom amounts to in a world in which “white-coated male authorities” set the standards of “what” there is to measure and what the measurements “mean.”

  7. Space prevents me from addressing [C] here. I make some preliminary suggestions in Scharff (2011, 2012), in the spirit of Heidegger’s idea of “preparing a free relation” with technology (Heidegger 2008, p. 311).

  8. Heidegger 1987, p. 35; Heidegger 1967, p. 46.

  9. Heidegger 1987, p. 37; Heidegger 1967, p. 48.

  10. Heidegger 1987, p. 37; Heidegger 1967, pp. 48–49.

  11. Heidegger 1987, p. 38; Heidegger 1967, p. 50.

  12. Heidegger 1987, p. 38; Heidegger 1967, p. 50.

  13. Plato 1961, pp. 745–746 (510b–511b),

  14. “Aristotle’s metaphysics contains observations on the nature of numbers but he made no original contributions to mathematics.” This assessment, typical of accounts of his science, continues: “Aristotle’s writings on science are largely qualitative, as opposed to quantitative. Beginning in the 16th century, scientists began applying mathematics to the physical sciences, and Aristotle's work in this area was deemed hopelessly inadequate.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle. For a better assessment of Aristotle on mathematics, including the suggestion that he had something like a universal mathematics, see Henry Mendell, “Aristotle and Mathematics,” http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-mathematics

  15. Heidegger 1987, p. 54; Heidegger 1967, p. 71.

  16. Heidegger 1987, p. 55; Heidegger 1967, p. 71.

  17. Heidegger 1987, p. 55; Heidegger 1967, p. 72.

  18. Heidegger 1987, p. 56; Heidegger 1967, p. 73. My translation.

  19. Heidegger 1987, p. 56; Heidegger 1967, p. 74.

  20. Heidegger 1987, p. 58; Heidegger 1967, p. 75.

  21. Husserl 1954, p. 18; Husserl 1970, p. 21.

  22. Husserl 1954, p. 19; Husserl 1970, p. 22.

  23. See Husserl 1954, p. 20f.; Husserl 1970, p. 23f.

  24. Husserl 1954, p. 20; Husserl 1970, p. 27

  25. Husserl 1954, p. 25; after Husserl 1970, p. 28

  26. Husserl 1954, p. 30; Husserl 1970, p. 32

  27. Husserl 1954, p. 31; after Husserl 1970, p. 33.

  28. Husserl 1954, p. 44; after Husserl 1970, p. 44.

  29. Husserl 1954, p. 20; Husserl 1970, p. 22

  30. Husserl 1954, p. 49; Husserl 1970, p. 48–49

  31. In new theoretical work, this has involved not a rejection of mathematics and measurement but its transformation by (a) the application of dynamic systems theory to neurobiological systems, (b) the recognition of the special type of mathematics that applies to autopoietic systems, and (c) keeping the internal structure of cognition rooted in kife. See Thompson 2007, passim. For a rich phenomenological account of the scope of cognition, see Gallagher and Zahavi 2012.

  32. Crease 2011, p. 227.

  33. Crease 2011, p. 270.

  34. Compare Crease 2011, pp. 269–273 with Schrag 1997, pp. 93–109.

  35. Steven Shapin, “Plus or Minus One Ear,” London Review of Books 34:16 (30 August 2012), pp. 8–10.

  36. “Worker Tells Court He Lacked Math to Measure Crane Part,” New York Times, Wednesday, March 14, 2012.

  37. In his 1962 speech announcing a project to send an astronaut to the moon, for instance, U.S. President John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Copenhagen, Nørre Farimagsgade 5 A, Room 10.0.27, 1014, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis

  2. University of Twente, Drienerlolaan 5, Ravelijn 4313, 7522, NB, Enschede, the Netherlands

    Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis

  3. University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824-3574, USA

    Robert C. Scharff

  4. Department of Philosophy, Stony Brook University, 213 Harriman Hall, Stony Brook, NY, 11794, USA

    Donn Welton & Robert P. Crease

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  1. Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis
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  2. Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis
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  3. Robert C. Scharff
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  4. Donn Welton
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  5. Robert P. Crease
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Correspondence to Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis.

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Friis, J.K.B.O., Dijksterhuis, F.J., Scharff, R.C. et al. Book Symposium on Robert P. Crease’s World in the Balance: the Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement . Philos. Technol. 26, 227–246 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-013-0103-1

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