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this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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There are many forces and powers that cannot be measured. They're often the most self-evidently desirable things in the world. Love, hate, determination, artistry, joy, generosity, compassion, character, wisdom, justice and beauty, etc. Hence the cute quote from sociologist William Bruce Cameron that "not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". Most psychological and sociological phenomena are immeasurable by the strict meaning of the word.
As for physics, we can't measure the future, for example, though there are interesting equations which could possibly account for an near infinite variety of outcomes in a given system. And there are many theories that we can only measure under ideal, localized conditions. We can only hope that they are ubiquitous throughout the universe.
Then there are problems like the Duhem–Quine underdetermination thesis. This thesis says that the agreement of the empirical consequences of a theory with the available observations is not a sufficient reason for accepting the theory. In other words, logic and experience leave room for conceptually incompatible but empirically equivalent explanatory alternatives. This is especially endemic in biology.
And if you want to be more philosophical, it has been argued by guys like Hume and Locke that there is always a “veil of perception” between us and external objects: we do not have directly measurable access to the world, but instead have an access that is mediated by sensory appearances, the character of which might well depend on all kinds of factors (e.g., condition of sense organs, direct brain stimulation, etc.) besides those features of the external world that our perceptual judgments aim to capture. According to many philosophers, nothing is ever directly present to the mind in perception except perceptual appearances.
My point in all of this is that empiricism is axiomatically limited in it's scope and potential. All of our chest-thumping and shouting, "Science! Science! Science!" is a bit naive when it ignores core issues of epistemology.
My personal belief is that knowledge is, in it's first phase, abstract. Only then can it be quantifiable or measurable within a particular system.
The recent trend towards scientism shys away from abstraction, perhaps because they perceive it as a sort of dog-whistle for God.
Perhaps there's an argument against scientific hubris: if we look through history, and to this day, we can see those who champion rigid adherence to religion above all else as the cause of much suffering. On the other hand the latter half of the 10 Commandments provide a fairly sensible groundwork for law and order in society.
As for love, whilst we may not be able to measure it directly, we can certainly see evidence of it's power; "I would do anything for love, I'd run right in to hell and back" Meatloaf. I'd also argue that the core human emotions can be explained by evolution, and compared with animal behaviour. In preparing for fight or flight fear can be measured in a raised heart rate, the release of chemicals, and electrical activity within the brain.
I think one of the cornerstones of science is that it is open to a theory being overturned as new evidence comes to light.
Duhem–Quine, or the "veil of perception”, well yes, we do have to make some assumptions somewhere, you assume that I know how to read and understand your words written in English, which I do and I'm sure a great many others do - perhaps we could use this as a baseline example of knowledge. We all know the word "stop" and it's meaning in context though we might not all react to it in the same way.
Then again, it could all just be my imagination.