CHAPTER VII 



SCIENCE AS MEASUREMENT TYCHO BRAHE, 



KEPLER, BOYLE 



CONSIDERING the value for clearness of thought of 

 counting, measuring and weighing, it is not surpris- 

 ing to find that in the seventeenth century, and even 

 at the end of the sixteenth, the advance of the sciences 

 was accompanied by increased exactness of measure- 

 ment and by the invention of instruments of pre- 

 cision. The improvement of the simple microscope, 

 the invention of the compound microscope, of the 

 telescope, the micrometer, the barometer, the thermo- 

 scope, the thermometer, the pendulum clock, the 

 improvement of the mural quadrant, sextant, spheres, 

 astrolabes, belong to this period. 



Measuring is a sort of counting, and weighing a 

 form of measuring. We may count disparate things 

 whether like or unlike. When we measure or weigh 

 we apply a standard and count the times that the unit 

 cubit, pound, hour is found to repeat itself. We 

 apply our measure to uniform extension, meting out 

 the waters by fathoms or space by the sun's diameter, 

 and even subject time to arbitrary divisions. The hu- 

 man mind has been developed through contact with 

 the multiplicity of physical objects, and we find it 

 impossible to think clearly and scientifically about 

 our environment without dividing, weighing, measur- 

 ing, counting. 



In measuring time we cannot rely on our inward 



