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SUMMARY:The shifting economies of measurement uncertainty - Eran Tal (Depa
 rtment of History and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20150226T153000Z
DTEND:20150226T170000Z
UID:TALK57277@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Richard Staley
DESCRIPTION:In 2018 the General Conference on Weights and Measures plans t
 o redefine four of the base units of the International System (SI) – the
  kilogram\, ampere\, kelvin and mole – by fixing the numerical values of
  four fundamental constants. This change is meant to release the uncertain
 ties of metric measurements from their dependence on the idiosyncrasies of
  particular material artefacts. And yet the planned redefinition raises an
  epistemological difficulty: in the absence of absolute and concrete stand
 ards\, what does it mean for a measurement outcome to be more or less accu
 rate? This puzzle is solved\, I argue\, by acknowledging that measurement 
 uncertainty is a special case of predictive uncertainty\, that is\, the un
 certainty involved in predicting the behaviour of a measurement process wi
 th a theoretical and/or statistical model of that process. The uncertainty
  assigned to a measuring system in the new SI accordingly reflects scienti
 sts' ability to use fundamental physical equations to predict the behaviou
 r of that system. Viewed in this light\, the planned redefinition of SI un
 its implicitly promotes a new economy of uncertainty in the physical scien
 ces\, i.e. a new set of principles for the management of scientific uncert
 ainty that treats measurement as the approximation of ideal theoretical re
 lations. I explore some of the counterintuitive epistemological consequenc
 es of this shift.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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