Measuring Instruments
Instrumental rationality can also refer to physical instruments and the processes of measurement and control. An ammeter, for example, combines the physical phenomena of electromagnetism with the geometric rationality of trigonometry. In this tradition, "instrumental rationality" is often simply called "instrumentation".
This use of the term originates with natural philosophy but has applications to scientific cybernetics and data acquisition.
Read more about this topic: Instrumental Rationality
Famous quotes containing the words measuring and/or instruments:
“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)