Talk:Comparative metrology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article was nominated for deletion on August 23, 2005. The result of the discussion was keep.

Contents 1 Candidate (needs to be verified) 2 Development of the accuracy of measurement of the circumference of the Earth 3 The meter is the Devil himself 4 Suggested rename 5 Historical measures as seen by pseudoscience 6 Discussion? 6.1 Contribution by User:rktect 7 I give up

[edit] Candidate (needs to be verified)

Charles Piazzi Smyth, in his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), claimed that the measurements he obtained from the Great Pyramid of Giza indicated a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to 1.001 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects. From this he extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature.

[edit] Development of the accuracy of measurement of the circumference of the Earth

See: http://www.algonet.se/~sirius/eaae/aol/market/collabor/erathost/ -- Egil 15:22, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The meter is the Devil himself

This quote is really marvellous, although not suitable for the article proper:

The metric system is indeed based on the Sumerian cubit, because like many other weapons in the Devil's arsenal, it originated with Semiramis and Nimrod. Consult Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons if you would know more.

This should be enough reason to abandon the meter once and for all! It was made by Smerdis of Tlön, taken from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Standards of measure in the Near Eastern Bronze Age.

[edit] Suggested rename

The term Stecchini uses for his flavor of historic metrology is comparative metrology [1], and I've seen it used by others too. I suggest a rename accordingly, which hopefully would make the title less provocative to some. It seems like it would also fit the megalithic yard and its followers that relate it to Life, the Universe and Everything, because that MY is obtained from Stonehenge et al in somewhat the same way the old Smyth-gang measured the Kheops pyramid and extracted measures from it. Nay-sayers can express their opinion below. -- Egil 11:35, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be a good idea but it is less descriptive maybe even misleading. Jimp

It seems that under the VfD for this article, questions were raised wrt. the NPOV of the title of the article. Additionally, it would also seem that in earlier times, like for instance alchemy, these ideas were at least somewhat more accepted then they are now. -- Egil 06:45, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Historical measures as seen by pseudoscience

I've just stumbled on this page. Is there a reason that we've got two so similar articles? Should they be merged? Jimp 14Sep05

Good question. I once created that article as a way of dealing with a previous attack from a believer in both the Megalithic Yard and indeed its connectedness to everything. Then I forgot about it [which was sort of the idea, anyhow ;-) ]. In many ways, it is the same thing as we are seeing now, except that the starting point is Stonehenge instead of Egypt. It would still fit the comparative metrology label, I would think. Btw, it does sems this branch was more or less bona fide untill around 1900. -- Egil 08:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion?

In his edit, User:rktect replaced the entire article with something that was meant as a discussion. Since it for the most part replaced the existing article, I am assuming it was put into the article by error, and I am thus pasting his contribution below, and restoring the original content of the article. The article needs more work, and it seems obvious that User:rktect has studied comparative metrology very carefully. The main problem is that it can be very difficult to differentiate what are the claims by Taylor, Smyth, Stecchini et al, and what are the good rktects original ideas. Unlike the ideas of Taylor, Smyth and Stecchini, I'm afraid that I believe the ideas of rktect himself are not of sufficient notability to be included in Wikipedia. Even under the psudoscientific label. -- Egil 06:34, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

I will make an attempt to incorporate some of this material in the article, but it will take a very long time, because the frequency of factual errors and speculation is so extraordinarily high. -- Egil 07:27, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

User Egil seems to feel that, contrary to the stated principles of Wikipedia, an historical review of what has been written about a topic constitutes original research. Egil claims that even discussing the facts of a matter that he has rightly or wrongly labled pseudo science, constitutes pseudo science.

Rather than being a mistake, the intent of the version below is to demonstate that even an article with as flagrantly POV a title as "Pseudoscientific Metrology" could be written from NPOV. Changing the title of the article to "Comparative Metrology" may be a step in the right direction. If an NPOV approach could be taken it might be allowed that readers would then form their own conclusions based on the cited facts rather than the speculations of the writers.

Wikipedia generally takes the encyclopedic position that an historical listing of research can be done without drawing conclusions, letting the content of the ideas stand or fall without commentary. What we write here proceeds from the premise that it is unwarranted speculation that goes beyond an historical review of what has been written about a topic that constitutes original research. Removing the amount of personal POV from any encyclopedic writing might be a good start toward reducing the number of factual errors and speculations in Wikipedia. Rktect 10:33, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

If only you could stick to straight totally undisputed facts, and at least get them right. In the first passage I looked at, you claim that John Greaves was a professor at Baliol College, Oxford, and that he worked with a person called Tito Livo Burritani. As usual, when I probe your claims, everything gives. The college you mentioned is where Greaves was educated, not where he was a professor, and the spelling of the Italian gentlemans name is totally in the woods. Sorry, it is simply not good enough to be useful. -- Egil 11:54, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the correction. The corect spelling is Tito Livo Burattini. John Greaves graduated from Balliol college in 1621 learned in oriental languages, Ancient Greek and Arabian and studied in Persian writers on astronomy. In 1630, John was chosen Professor of Geometry in Gresham College in London. In 1640 he was chosen Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University having been replaced at Gresham College due to his Royalist politics. In 1646, he published Pyramidosgraphia, or a Discourse of the Pyramids in Egypt. In 1647, he published, A Discourse of the Roman Foot and Denarius. He retired to London and got married and died on October 8, 1652 in London. Rktect 16:31, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Contribution by User:rktect

Claims of Pseudoscientific metrology originated with the revival of interest in the Great Pyramid of Giza, during the Renaissance. Claims about the Great Pyramid and its incorporation of mathematical proportions such as Pi and Phi led to a long procession of scientists to Egypt to determine by measurement the truth of the claims.

The first reports had been from Greeks such as Herodotus, Thales, Solon, Plato, Pytagorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus and were relatively straightforward eyewitness accounts. These were followed up by more reports from Arabs such as Abdullah al Mamun. Tito Livo Burritani made several trips to the Great Pyramid c 1639 and took measurements with John Greaves who was a professor in geometry at Baliol College, Oxford. Sir Isaac Newton attempted to incorporate Greaves work in his theory of gravitation.

The next wave of exploraton began during the Napoleonic wars when a number of French savants who were interested in establishing the metric system visited the Great Pyramid and made more interesting discoveries regarding its orientation and geographic position. Napoleons surveyors found that the pyramid was accurately oriented to the four cardinal points of the compass and therefore used the meridian running through its apex as the base line of their measurements. Having mapped lower Egypt they were suprised to find that this meridian neatly cut the delta region in two and that the diagonals drawn through the pyramid at right angles completely enclosed the entire delta. Jomard found that not only had the apothem or slant side of the pyramid been commented upon classically as being a stadia of 185 m, which was taken as 1/600 of a geographical degree but his own measurements confirmed this.

Upon Napoleons defeat the British took over the job. Working off the measurements of Howard Vyse who had cleared the base and been able to measure the casing stones John Taylor discovered that if he divided the perimeter of the pyramid by twice its height he got a ratio of about 3 1/7. Taylor concluded that perhaps the perimeter had been intended to represent the great circle of the earth and said "That it was to make a record of the measure of the earth that it was built". At this time Sir John Herschel an eminent British astronomer was arguing that British measures were more nearly geo-commensurate than the French metric system. Herschel discovered that the maps of the British Ordinance survey which had been done at a scale of 1:2500, while they bore no relation to the English mile of 5280 feet, agreed well with both the side of the English acre and the Egyptian cubit. At about this same time discoveries of standards of measurement in Mesopotamia offered support of Taylor and Herschels beliefs.

For the next century and a half claims about the amazing properties of the pyramid grew more and more extreme as explorer after explorer cleared and measured the inside and outside of the Pyramid and the heyday of Pyramidiocy merged theories of Biblical revelation such as those of Piazzi Smyth with the Ocult culminating in Peter Tompkins book "Secrets of the Great Pyramid" which included chapters that not merely described the historical interest but went so far as to mention all of the bizarre theories of secret chambers, ufo's initiated wisdom and Biblical prophecy.

Although the speculation that there is some direct connection between pseudoscientific ideas, metrology and the anti metric movement needs to be better researched, it is fair to say that those who speculate are often wrong. Those who claim that historical metrology is pseudoscientific miss the point that measurements are scientific, it is unwarrented conclusions drawn from opinion and speculation that cause the problem.

Archeological finds and historical documents support the basic premise that the Great Pyramid is very accurately aligned and constructed. Huge collections of artifacts like the size of fields, Nilometers, rulers, architecture, boats and even various sizes of building stone and inscription grids are referenced in the literature make that much clear. Many statements are not easily determined as true or false by consensus of opinion.

John Taylor, in his 1859 book "The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? & Who Built It?", claimed that the Great Pyramid wasbuilt to make a record of the measure of the Earth.

A person such as Taylor who has studied miles and stadia might say they have been intended to be unit divisions of a degree of the Earth's great circle circumference since they were first defined as standards of measure by the rope stretchers of Mesopotamia and Egypt without invoking much outrage. If a counterposition is taken that it was not until the 17th century that the circumference of the Earth was measured with sufficient accuracy that it could be used as basis for a measure of length then Taylor or Jomard might argue that evidence is widely available that in classical antiquity 75 Roman miles were taken as a degree. They might point out that the concept of a degree as a unit for angle measurement was known by the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, and that there were many ancient maps where degrees of latitude and longitude were indicated.

If it is argued that it was Taylor or Vyse who inspired Charles Piazzi Smyth to go to Egypt, and subsequently publish his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), where he claimed that the measurements he obtained from the Great Pyramid of Giza indicated a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to 1.001 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects this probably would not be too far fetched.

If it is argued that Taylor is responsible for the fact that from this Smyth extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature, that would be a stretch but not entirely wrong as the ideas of both men are more computational than mensurational. Taylor might have agreed with Smyth on these points but he never expressed such a sentiment.

If it is argued that as Smyth claimed, and presumably believed, the inch was a god-given measure handed down through the centuries from the time of Israel, and that the architects of the pyramid could only have have been directed by the hand of God we enter a different realm which is to some degree the product of the religious fundamentalism of 19th century England.

Smyth supported Taylors idea in that in measuring the pyramid, he found the perimeter of the base to equal the number of days in a year in inches, but Smyth went beyond Taylor when he claimed to have found a numeric relationship between the height of the pyramid in inches to the distance from Earth to the Sun, measured in statute miles. Both men used their findings to argue against the introduction of the metre in Britain.

Some say the first known descrition and practical use of a seconds pendulum was by Galileo Galilei but Flinders Petrie, the well respected father of modern Egyptology was of another opinion. Writing in an article in Nature, 1933Petrie said, "If we take the natural standard of one day divided by 10⁵, the pendulum would be 29.157 inches at lat 30 degrees. Now this is exactly the basis of Egyptian land measures, most precisely known through the diagonal of that squared, being the Egyptian double cubit. The value for this cubit is 20.617 inches, while the best examples in stone are 20.620±0.005inches." Petrie is acknowledged to be right about the value of the royal cubit but others (Stecchini) have argued it was improbable that the Egyptians had any such device.[2]

Though IES Smith in his book "The Pyramids of Egypt" has pointed out that amongst the tools of the Egyptian builders have been found many plumets and devices for measuring verticle angles this does not prove that the Egyptians used them as seconds pendulums. Despite that a common plumet is a pendulum and one with which any builder is well familiar, the length of the second pendulum, at close to a meter, would not have been an Egyptian standard of measure but rather a Mesopotamian standard.

During the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt members of the French Académie des Sciences researching ancient linear measures had found many references to their being derived directly from the circumference of the Earth in classical writings and as others have continued to review their work over the last couple of centuries the body of scientific support for this position has grown.

As some of the standards of measure of Mesopotamia were discovered, various people (Jean-Adolphe Decourdemanche in 1909, August Oxé in 1942) came to the conclusion that the relationship between them was well planned. Livio C. Stecchinidiscusses some of the results in his A History of Measures'The relation among the units of length can be explained by the ratio 15:16:17:18 among the four fundamental feet and cubits. Before I arrived at this discovery, Decourdemanche and Oxé discovered that the cubes of those units are related according to the conventional specific gravities of oil, water, wheat and barley. [3]

Stecchini shows that the Egyptian measures of length, originating from at least the 3rd millennium BC, were directly derived from the circumference of the earth [4]).

Stecchini also shows that Eratosthenes in 240 BC could not have himself measured the circumference of the Earth as is claimed because his numbers simply don't bear scrutiny. He clearly depends on a standard of measure no longer in use in his time.

The question of how the early Egyptians, in defining their cubit, could have achieved a degree of accuracy that can only be achieved with either very careful measurement or very sophisticated equipment and techniques would suggest they made careful measurement.

Building on Taylor, Smyth, and Stecchini John F. Neal, in his book All Done With Mirrors (in 2000), came to the conclusion that the foot was the grand unit, and that the common system of the ancient cultures was that the definition of their respective foot is 1/360,000th part of the longitudinal meridian degree of their respective latitudes. [5]

The odometer described by Vitruvius [6]. is one example of some of the evidence that might be summoned in support of this position. The conclusion of Neals book is:The English foot is the [vestigal] root, or number one, from which all other measures are extrapolated.

[edit] I give up

The question of how the early Egyptians, in defining their cubit, could have achieved a degree of accuracy that can only be achieved with either very careful measurement or very sophisticated equipment and techniques would suggest they made careful measurement.

Careful measurement, indeed. Untill conditions are such that it is possible to do sensible work here, I give up - time is simply too precious a commodity to waste on this nonsense. -- Egil 18:24, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Egil might profit by researching the concept of living the life in ma'3t. The fact is the the Egyptians are legendary for the pains they took with their measures to make things well proportioned, plumb, level, square and straight. They made very careful measurements.Rktect 01:41, 24 September 2005 (UTC)