*Emanuele Lugli* # Progressive Summary # Definitions # Chapter Notes ## Chapter 1 - Thinking through History The introduction of universal measurement was a social and political act. > It was not just a matter of producing hundreds of iron rods and dispatching them to provincial councils. It was not even solely about training functionaries with new manuals and convincing recalcitrant landowners to have their estates surveyed from scratch. Rather, it was about making people accept new ways to approach space, yearn for such a change, and delight in its possibilities. It was about making people thrive on renewal and long for changing themselves in return. Far from representing a mere technical change, the new measurements rejigged thinking at such a fundamental level that concepts such as accuracy, identity, and even truth were radically transformed in the process. As administrators went about replacing local standards, they dismissed them as primitive and irrational. > Amidst the metrological reforms taking place in eighteenth-century Italy, the most successful was the metric system. We still call it a “system” because of the interdependence of all its standards: one cubic decimeter contains one liter of water, which weighs a kilogram. Moreover, it is rational: it defines its components in relation to principles of geophysics and mathematics. Indeed, the meter was established as one hundred-thousandth of a quarter of the earth meridian. And it was divided decimally, rather than by the twelfths as was customary in premetric times, so to facilitate the application of calculus to matter. As both a geodetic standard and a tool to mathematize the real, the meter turned the world into a playground for engineers. > > It took the whole of the 1790s for the meter to become a reality. > As plastic later became the go-to material for anything from acrylic boats to shellac records, desensitizing people to material properties, so the meter quantified rolls of silk in the same way as it measured land and the distance between stars. The technical precision of metric machinery, moreover, made all previous standards appear rudimentary, classifying old data as approximate, and unleashing a new sense of scientific complacency about the past. > For all its exhilarating novelties, the meter was initially short-lived. As an innovation and a symbol of the Napoleonic empire, it was banned at the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15. It was, however, reintroduced in 1840s France, fueling the ambitions of economic liberalism. And it is from this second energetic relaunch that it has became the global phenomenon we observe today. The history books on the meter present the ensuing century as a time in which it was embraced by an ever-growing list of countries, from Mexico to Japan. Italy was a early adopter, as it introduced the meter with the nation’s unification in 1861, soon after which the metric system became a compulsory subject in primary schools. Massaged into the brains of children from an early age, the meter has since shaped every action on Italian soil, as well as in the vast majority of the world. Today only Americans, Liberians, air pilots, and cricket players perceive it as a foreign construct. British drivers still compute distances in miles. For most people in the world, however, it has become almost invisible. ## Chapter 2 - Measurements, Epistemological Filters The French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715) argued for the use of exact and universal measurements. "Pour comparer les choses entre elles, ou plutôt pour mesurer exactement les rapports d’inégalité, il faut une mesure exacte, il faut une idée simple et parfaitement intelligible, une mesure universelle et qui puisse s’accommoder à toute sorte de sujets.” He used some thought experiments to show that our perceptions are deceptive. If the whole shrunk to the same degree, we wouldn't notice it, because everything around us would shrink together with us. The same would happen if the world were to grow enormously. > ... scale works as an epistemological filter, making people separate what they ought to know from what they can ignore. Objects that loom large make their presence feel pressing and urgent. Malebranche, who defines humans in relation to their survival instinct (hence his preoccupation with wild beasts), considers scale in relation to danger. As scale shifts, however, it tricks. When beasts appear smaller and less terrifying, people cannot be sure that it is because they are far away. Perception can lead to erroneous judgments and should not be trusted. > [!NOTE] Malebranche, Descartes and Akomolafe > Is there a connection with Akomolafe's [[Reference Notes/Books/These Wilds Beyond Our Fences|These Wilds Beyond Our Fences]]? Does the wild show up differently in the European and the African imagination? Did Malebranche suffer from the same trauma and insecurity as Descartes (1596-1650), which led to the need to control through measurement? > [!NOTE] References > [Malebranche 1997 - The search after truth](zotero://select/items/1_L9DNJHP7) > > https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/malebranche/ > Yet, little attention has been paid to the standardization of perception triggered by measurements. Still, in 1850 the director of Milan’s technical school, Pietro Baraldi, exhorted his students to “get used to seeing” millimeters since they represented the degree of precision of modern machinery. As labeling systems, metric divisions instituted the distinctions they appear to merely demarcate, constructing notions of uniformity and values that did not exist before. In 1853 the archaeologist Luigi Canina lamented that Trajan’s monumental column in Rome lost its sense of grandiose perfection the moment its height of 100 Roman feet was rendered as 29.635 meters. > > Measurements exert pressure on the real while carrying its stamp. As both physical and epistemological modules, standards shape perceptions as much as they describe them. Measurements are not just descriptors, and here lies the shortcoming in Malebranche’s reasoning. Measuring may reveal the errors of intuitive perceptions, but it produces deformities nevertheless. If it does not seem that way, it is because measurements are supported by institutions and discourses that certify their findings. ## Chapter 3 - Metrological Blurs # Quotes # References