Abstract
According to Robert Tavernor, a flaw that plagues contemporary life is the lack of belief in the idea expressed in these words of Protagoras, the pre-Socratic philosopher and original Sophist, of whose work only a few fragments, such as the one quoted above, survive. The humanistic culture of which he was a participant in founding no longer survives in a vital way in the modern world. Yet Protagoras is one of the few significant figures relevant to the history of Western measuring systems whose thought has not been brought to bear on the topic in this fascinating, and, ultimately, moving book by Robert Tavernor. Conspicuous by their absence, perhaps the familiarity of Protagoras’s words argued for their exclusion from this closely argued book, whose goal is to take one of the most prosaic and familiar of all modern human tools, the metric system of measurement, and suggest the depth of meaning that lies dormant in treating this subject solely in an instrumental fashion, as an aspect of technological advancement. His title clearly echoes the famous aphorism while suggesting a sly inversion of its meaning. Yet it may be Protagoras’s reputation as the precursor of relativism that places him outside of Tavernor’s concerns, for in the history of measurement precision of mutually agreed upon standards has perforce always been the goal, and any confusion on this issue would be counterproductive.
“Of all things the measure is man...” Protagoras
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Recent general publications on the history of measurement include Andrew Robinson, The Story of Measurement, Thames and Hudson, 2007; Ian Whitelaw, A Measure of All Things: the Story of Man and Measurement, St. Martin’s Press, 2007; Adam Parfitt, et al., A Measure of Everything: an Illustrated Guide to the Science of Measurement, Firefly Books, 2006, in addition to at least nine books in English since the mid-1970s listed in Tavernor’s bibliography.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Kim Williams Books, Turin
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ytterberg, M. (2009). Robert Tavernor Smoot’s Ear: The Measure of Humanity. In: Williams, K. (eds) Nexus Network Journal. Nexus Network Journal, vol 11,1. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-8974-1_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7643-8974-1_11
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser Basel
Print ISBN: 978-3-7643-8973-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-7643-8974-1
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)