ABSTRACT
There is a vast literature on measurement and on the relation to theory of measurement, experience, evidence. 2 With few exceptions, these accounts have cases of simple, isolated, empirical, numerical hypotheses, like the ideal gas law, Ohm’s law or Pythagoras’ theorem, as their paradigm examples from which the general ideas are drawn and against which they are checked. However, scientific progress leads from those isolated beginnings to comprehensive networks of theories in which the systems originally studied form only small fragments. New devices of measurement are then introduced, and many (or even most) of the original methods of measurement are regarded as obsolete after a while. Such new devices of measurement often are quite different from the original methods. For instance, they often are “dependent” on the very same theory whose functions they determine—an idea hardly consistent with traditional concepts of measurement. The broader perspective of comprehensive theoretical networks and the practice of measurement in such broader contexts call for an extension of traditional views about measurement—an extension that may well necessitate some revision.
