Article ID: CBB127439302

Gauss and the Mathematical Background to Standardisation (2020)

unapi

Our aim is to explore the links between standardisation, the quantifying spirit, and the discipline mathematics. To do so, we consider the work of Gauss, renowned as a pure mathematician, but professionally an astronomer, and one heavily engaged with all kinds of measuring and precision initiatives. He contributed to the mathematical correction of data with the method of least squares; to observations of high precision in his geodetic work; to the introduction of absolute measures in his collaborations with Weber on terrestrial magnetism; and to the rationalisation of weights and measures in the state of Hannover. Ultimately, the question is to what extent such precision and standardisation activities may have been rooted in the mathematical way of thinking. Mathematics in our tradition has had a strong contemplative bias (theory, theorein in Greek means to contemplate), but it’s a fact that mathematics has always had a non-eliminable technical side.

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Article Javier Ordóñez; Antonio Sánchez (2020) Introduction: Standards in the History of Contemporary Science. HOST: Journal of History of Science and Technology (pp. 1-5). unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Miguel Ohnesorge
Schrimpf, Andreas
Warren, Michelle R.
Rodríguez, Carlos J.
Reventós, Agustí
Reich, Karin
Concepts
Mathematics
Applied mathematics
Metrology
Standards and standardization
Astronomy
Quantification
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
17th century
Early modern
Places
Germany
Hanover (Germany)
Florence (Italy)
United States
Polar regions
Europe
Institutions
Convention du mètre (1875)
International Bureau of Weights and Measures
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