Tools of measure philosophy

I was driving through the mountains, 60 kmph today on my car weighing over half a ton. Which burned fuel approx. 15km per liter rate. Yet the speed was not regular as the bends were numerous. The air was humid with 24deg warm on Celsius scale. Ambient light did not do good for vision but provided enough that I did now want to turn on the headlights. The only noise added to the surrounding was by the engine of the car yet was not beyond few decibels. Even monkeys did not move, because they are so much used to that noise.

Driving through misty mountains

That was just an observation from today. You may have done it before. It's just a familiar scenario. I gave it as an example to illustrate the fact that how much we are used to these scales of measures in day-to-day life. At school as children, we spent major part of our lives learning these tools of measure. And I don't think there are many people who function without at least basic understanding of these scales.

Hilariously just the other day I watched an episode of SNL where great George Washington introducing measuring scales to new Americans, at the verge of revolutionary war. How he made everything opposite of the normal, while the world chose metrics, Americans use arbitrary scales. Like measuring milk in pints and distances in miles.

It gives me an opportunity to look back at our measuring scales. From the great George Washingtons point of view, as there is deep philosophy in it.

Tools of measure in USA

When a follower asked Mr. President why he is choosing miles over Meters he did not have any answer. He just laughed it off. Equally all other bizarre scales that Dream nation uses have no basis. But the problem is not it. If you look at all the other SI units, they also have arbitrary basis. Even meters, even kilograms even seconds. I have discussed time in detail in the book what is time. But let's look at a meter here.

Meters

The standard international unit of length, defined as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second.

Now, do not ask me why its 1/299 792 458.

Not 1/300 000 000. It is arbitrary as it can be. No matter how much you try to rationalize numbers there will always be unexplainable depth to it. Another fact to notice is it depend on the speed of light. I would rather bet on a fixed number than speed of light. You might say it's constant. But there is a chance the speed of light is not constant. If everything changed according to the same scale overnight, we have no ability to know whether a meter has changed. Together with the speed of light. Imagine everything expands in the universe to same scale. Maybe a meter is double the length as yesterday!

In reality, what I can see is nothing a constant. The constants that we see are just imaginary. I would say they are platonic. Just like a perfect circle. We can mathematically and imaginatively assume there are perfect circles and squares. But when we change our scale of measures to really small and really large all the squares either become ragged lines or unmeasurably small dots. These are just concepts.

Science

Do not get me wrong. I'm not saying there is no use of measuring. I use them daily just like you. That is not even the point. The real message is in matters of life and consciousness and meaning, we have to look beyond science. The answers are there not where the science is used to solve our problems. Answers will be there only when we recognize why science fails when it comes to questions about life. As science always assume something to be true to measure something against what is arbitrarily fixed. Let's not get onto an argument here. But a discussion so we can improve on science where it fails. And let's call it pseudoscience 😆 of philosophy