Technikatörténeti szemle 10. (1978)
A MÉRÉS ÉS A MÉRTÉKEK AZ EMBER MŰVELŐDÉSÉBEN című konferencián Budapesten, 1976. április 27–30-án elhangzott előadások II. - Wette, E. W.: Egy döntő mennyiségi-minőségi változás lehetősége a mérés és matematikai kísérletek története alapján
É. W. WETTE* THE POSSIBILITY OF A DEFINITIVE QUANTITY-QUALITY CHANGE FROM THE HISTORY OF MEASUREMENT AND OF MATHEMATICAL TRIALS AS TO A CONSISTENT SYNTHESIS OF THE UNIQUE SUBSTANCE IN ALL MOTIONS — To the memory of G. W. Leibniz (1646—1716) — 1. Astronomical observations gave mankind the first certainty that there are regularities in the sky, independent of ups and downs on earth. The measurement of angles from shadows on the earth or from spherical triangles in the sky yielded a measure for intervals of time. Triangles on the earth required the measurement of angles and distances. Taxes and laws used//use not only the ability of counting, but also a valuation of different things. Trade and traffic were//are confronted with the comparison of different standards for the measure of length, volume, weight, as well as for a valuation by money (together with diverse manners). 2. Physical experiments, beginning about 1590", led to a dynamic explanation of planetary orbits, and, step by step, to a numerical control over nearly all motions of the inanimate nature. The reciprocal influence between physics and its technical applications effected both, an increasing exactness of physical measurements, and an increasing precision of technical instruments as well as of engineering. The reaction on human life was enormous: revolutionizing methods in industrial production, connected with new social differences, and with economic rivalries on the international market—including the fatal chaos of two world wars. 3. The 1875 Paris convention to introduce, to unify and to perfect the metric system »des poids et mesures « indicates the then trust in the existence of a unique substance as creating all motions. The formalisms of relativity and quantum theory undermined such a trust, even if there are many eulogies on the unity of antitheses as concerns relativistic transformations or quantizing operators, and on the deterministic character of probability or uncertainty prognoses. No: a genuine mathematician ought to rectify each ,, coincidentia oppositorum", since in logic ,,ex falso quodlibet sequitur"; the most fundamental exclusion principle is, that neither words nor formulas can realize an „impossible" (e.g., self-traverse) distribution of curvatures and elongations as a possible world. 4. The mathematician can formulate and compute a complete diagram of all motions, which does not refer to any physical concept: he reduces .dynamics' in motion to „statics" in its diagram, but he has to concretize (normal and shearing) .stress' in statics by a (strained and curved) net of lines with an optimum content of all its parts, throughout the diagram; he can interpret ,mass'//,charge' as differences of curvature//elongation „below minus above" the (flattened and equalized) average diagram; he can explain away the .indefinite' metrization of space & time as a local * Am Markt 26, Hennef-Uckerath, BRD.
