ABSTRACT
This chapter starts to explore how parts of mathematics (and its symbols) are related and ‘applied’ to events in the material world, by means of the process of measurement. The range of what and how humans have chosen to measure has both widened and deepened over the ages, as have the techniques and devices for doing so. The expression ‘to get the measure of something’ (as well as ‘to have someone’s number’) implies it is then satisfactorily known.
