There used to be two types of natural scientists, the British philosopher Francis Bacon wrote in 1620. One type tried to capture the world in theoretical schemes and got stuck in fantasies. The other type, industriously and thoughtlessly as the ants, collected data about all sorts of things. Modern natural scientists did things differently, according to Bacon. They worked with the best of both types, distilling theoretical laws from carefully collected observations like bees extracting honey from nectar.
This ‘modern’ method has since been much further refined and adapted. Measuring methods became more sophisticated. New mathematics helped to put laws into formulas. And crucially, those formulas used to make predictions that could be confirmed or disproved in purposefully designed experiments—an excellent way to test the correctness and strength of underlying ideas and theories.
“By measuring to knowing”, the Dutch Nobel Prize winner Heike Kamerlingh Onnes summarized this method in 1882 during his inaugural lecture in Leiden. Onnes would then liquefy helium, create the coldest place on Earth in his lab and discover ‘superconductivity’. And it’s no wonder that such an experimental man put “measurement” first.
Nor is it surprising that theorists emphasize that inversely ‘knowing’ often inspires measurement. Take the prediction of the Higgs boson, which led to the construction of the cathedral-sized detectors at the European Institute for Particle Research CERN near Geneva. The crux of course is that a subtle interplay between measuring and knowing and between thinking and testing provides a growing insight into the world.
That is precisely why it is a pity that Onnes’ statement has worn down so quickly to ‘to measure is to know’. Because that’s just not what measuring in science is like, Bacon already showed. In addition to measuring, knowledge also requires thinking and a context formed by knowledge. Scientists who in a firm measure-is-know way ignore that context, or who blindly ignore the limitations of measurements, are doing science a disservice, and sometimes people too.
What ignoring restrictions can do is illustrated by the research into the side effects of drugs. These were usually determined for average men and in itself it is not surprising to assume averages here. Physicists who measure one electron immediately know all the electrons, but every person is the product of unique genes and a unique environment. Working with averages is often the only option. It is doubtful whether it was smart to exclude women from the study because of their ‘disruptive’ hormones. In any case, it is clear that whoever continues to ignore that the data does not represent the average woman will saddle half the population with a possible incorrect dosage and its consequences.
The results of disregarding the context became apparent in science itself, with the hyperfocus on the so-called h-index. As a measure of the number of publications and citations by scientists, the h-index does not take into account matters such as teaching, writing books and the further context of scientific practice. But the blind focus on the h-index, which became the benchmark for the course of scientific careers, has overshadowed all these other aspects so much that they now have to be brought back into the limelight with special programs. By the way, the same hyperfocus has been causing haggling about nitrogen concentrations for decades, while plant and animal species are disappearing quickly and silently from the Netherlands.
Perhaps the most annoying thing about ‘measurement is knowledge’ is that that statement suggests the existence of a definitive, indisputable and infinitely exact measurement and thus forms a breeding ground for the tactics of ‘delay measurements’. Just like the delay language coined by poet Lieke Marsman, delay measurements mask political inertia. Think of Groningen, where the cracks in the walls appear and the holes fall into the roofs, while the government and companies keep asking for more research into the link between gas extraction and earthquakes. Or think of the long series of climate reports that increasingly convincingly demonstrated the link between human actions and climate change, and yet were dismissed so often if not definitively enough.
All in all, isn’t it time to push back ‘to measure is to know’, at least as a description of how science works? Perhaps the ‘think, play, repeat’ of physicist and Nobel laureate Frank Wilczek offers clues. This names thinking, emphasizes the creative side of research through ‘play’ and shows through ‘repetition’ that there is always more to know. ‘Measuring is knowing’ can then still be used to weigh cheese or move forward, to count birds or molecules – within a clear context.
Margriet van der Heijden is a physicist and professor of science communication at Eindhoven University of Technology.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 10, 2022