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:
“Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–84)