Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 54 — page 42: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Milestones in Science—3 THE RULE by H.J.C. Prorte who have studied the ™ matter carefully are all agreed that science in any form ultimately depends upon the measurement of length. This may not at first sight be obvious, but close analysis will show it to be correct. Science, to get anywhere at all, must become concerned not merely with qualitative affairs but with quantitative relations: only these may be expressed with the precision and accuracy demanded by science. Any science, as it progresses, becomes increas- ingly occupied with establish- ing relations of quantitative variation. The physical sci- ° ences, especially physics itself, ‘have developed this to a very fine degree. It is not enough, for example, merely to dis- cover that objects attract each other. We must know how much they attract each other. By tackling this problem, Newton was !ed to the for- +1 .mulation of the famous in- verse square law which has played a. most tremendous part in the advance of physics. And without measurement there can be no examination of quantitative relations. Everybody will probably agree to that without our multiply- ing examples. What is not so easy to see is that any kind of measurement ultimately re- duces to a measurement of length. Let us see if we can make that clear. Take the operation of weighing. No lengths in- volved there you think? But your counterbalancing weights are simply a convenient means of expressing the force re- quired to make both pans of the balance stay the same distance from the horizontal plane of the balance fulcrum. In the spring balance, of course, the connection with length is even more direct. Now consider temperature comiclooks.cormn