IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bot/rivsta/v65y2005i3p243-256.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The concept of measure, from Plato to modern statistics. Art of living or intellectual principle?

Author

Listed:
  • Paola Monari

Abstract

This paper purports to show that the statistical concept of "measure" was advanced right from the origins of western thought: from the philosophical speculation of Plato, to the harmonic numerical relationships of Pythagoras. We must wait until the sixteenth century for a modern definition, when Galileo takes measurement away from the domain of shops and merchants and brings it to the realm of experimental science. It is Galileo too, who begins to delineate the statistical theory of errors which was further developed in the following centuries. Finally, in the nineteenth century, Kant distinguishes between extensive and intensive quantities; the letter do not possess the materiality which is required by physics, but which can still be measured. And so "psycomentrics" was conceived; the horizons of research were widened, and science recognised that everything can be measured, uncertainty, risk and indeterminismess too. So, science conquers probability as a powerful means of measurement in the vast world of uncertainty.

Suggested Citation

  • Paola Monari, 2005. "The concept of measure, from Plato to modern statistics. Art of living or intellectual principle?," Statistica, Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, vol. 65(3), pages 243-256.
  • Handle: RePEc:bot:rivsta:v:65:y:2005:i:3:p:243-256
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cook, David & Kaji, Takeshi Benjamín & Davíðsdóttir, Brynhildur, 2023. "An assessment of the scope and comprehensiveness of well-being economy indicator sets: The cases of Iceland, Scotland and New Zealand," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bot:rivsta:v:65:y:2005:i:3:p:243-256. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Giovanna Galatà (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dsbolit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.