Eran Tal (Cambridge): “Making Time: A Study in the Epistemology of Measurement”

Abstract: This article develops a model-based account of the standardization of physical measurement, taking the contemporary standardization of time as its central case study. To standardize the measurement of a quantity, I argue, is to legislate the mode of application of a quantity concept to a collection of exemplary artefacts. Legislation involves an iterative exchange between top-down adjustments to theoretical and statistical models regulating the application of a concept, and bottom-up adjustments to material artefacts in light of remaining gaps. The model-based account clarifies the cognitive role of ad hoc corrections, arbitrary rules, and seemingly circular inferences involved in contemporary timekeeping, and explains the stability of networks of standards better than its conventionalist and constructivist counterparts

Eran Tal is a Marie Curie Research Fellow in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in the interplay between instruments and knowledge claims in the natural sciences, on the roles epistemic and social values play in scientific inquiry, and on the relationships between uncertainty, ignorance and risk.

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