O.K., I've relented. 
A brief philosophical abstraction.
One on the things about measurement that I think tends to get overlooked is that we, as humans, prior to attempting to measure anything, make a pre-judgement that that thing can be actually be measured and then devise a means of measuring it. This is the sacred altar of Physics. But, philosophically speaking, there seems to be a flaw in that nice-'n'-tidy way of thinking. For a start, I do not believe that it is possible for any measurement we make not to have an effect on what it is that we are measuring. That effect may indeed be small and negligible, but to determine even that, it begs the original question of 'measurement'. A good illustrative example, that we are all familiar with, is using a low-sensitivity voltmeter to measure voltages in high-resistance circuits. Secondly, I believe that there are many naturally-occurring phenomena that are either misunderstood or that their existence is not even recognised - or even denied: the "if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist" argument. Example: Prior to Heinrich Hertz's discovery of electro-magnetic waves, if someone had said "I'm going to make an item of equipment to measure electro-magnetic waves", that person would have been laughed at - or worse. Just because something is not known to exist in current scientific though at any particular point in time does not mean that that phenomenon does not exist. Rumsfeld's famous quotation springs to mind here. Amongst my reading interests, I include para-psychology and the occult. There have been far to many unexplained mysteries that cannot all be put down to fraud, accident, pure chance (whatever that is) or 'known phenomena'.
And that, in summary, is what has always driven me to study Science: there is no limiting threshold, except pre-conceived notions.
Al.
A brief philosophical abstraction.
One on the things about measurement that I think tends to get overlooked is that we, as humans, prior to attempting to measure anything, make a pre-judgement that that thing can be actually be measured and then devise a means of measuring it. This is the sacred altar of Physics. But, philosophically speaking, there seems to be a flaw in that nice-'n'-tidy way of thinking. For a start, I do not believe that it is possible for any measurement we make not to have an effect on what it is that we are measuring. That effect may indeed be small and negligible, but to determine even that, it begs the original question of 'measurement'. A good illustrative example, that we are all familiar with, is using a low-sensitivity voltmeter to measure voltages in high-resistance circuits. Secondly, I believe that there are many naturally-occurring phenomena that are either misunderstood or that their existence is not even recognised - or even denied: the "if you can't measure it, it doesn't exist" argument. Example: Prior to Heinrich Hertz's discovery of electro-magnetic waves, if someone had said "I'm going to make an item of equipment to measure electro-magnetic waves", that person would have been laughed at - or worse. Just because something is not known to exist in current scientific though at any particular point in time does not mean that that phenomenon does not exist. Rumsfeld's famous quotation springs to mind here. Amongst my reading interests, I include para-psychology and the occult. There have been far to many unexplained mysteries that cannot all be put down to fraud, accident, pure chance (whatever that is) or 'known phenomena'.
And that, in summary, is what has always driven me to study Science: there is no limiting threshold, except pre-conceived notions.
Al.
