Talk:Pseudoscientific metrology

message: I came across this article after looking for some more information on the idea of the 'megalithic yard'. I have an open mind on whether such a thing exists or not, but whoever entitled this 'Pseudoscientific metrology' clearly didn't! Surely the title is concluding the argument before it's even started? I agree with others that the title needs to be changed to something more neutral.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lahgbr (talk • contribs) 11:17, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Skewed angle?

message: Quote from the page: "The Phasistos Disc is a computing aid that uses 366 glyphs to calculate Venus's orbital period."  Huh?  There's no agreement whatsoever on what the Phaistos Disc is.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.239.44.65 (talk) 21:28, 23 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Phaistos Disc

message: :Charles Piazzi Smyth, in his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), claimed that the measurements he obtained from the Great Pyramid of Giza indicated a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to 1.001 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects. From this he extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature.
:: The pyramid inch is then equated to a fraction of the polar axis, there being 500 millions of inches on the axis.  The cubit of 25 such inches, and the acre-side of 2500 such inches.  The pound is rated as 5 cubic inches of mean earth, taken as a specific gravity of 5.7, (against the modern estimate of 5.52).  Capacities is derived as water-weights, and the temperature is simply 5 times celcius.  All in all, it's pretty much earth-based measures.
:: In this way, it's pretty much a derivitive of the decimal metric system, which, in turn is derived by applying Bessel's size of the earth to a decimalised version of Casini's geographic system (nautical mile = 6000 feet). --Wendy.krieger (talk) 06:28, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Candidate (needs to be verified)

message: See: http://www.algonet.se/~sirius/eaae/aol/market/collabor/erathost/ -- Egil 15:22, 8 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Development of the accuracy of measurement of the circumference of the Earth

message: I've just stumbled on this page.  Is there a reason that we've got two so similar articles?  Should they be merged?  Jimp 14Sep05
:Good question. I once created that article as a way of dealing with a previous attack from a believer in both the Megalithic Yard and indeed its connectedness to everything. Then I forgot about it [which was sort of the idea, anyhow ;-) ]. In many ways, it is the same thing as we are seeing now, except that the starting point is Stonehenge instead of Egypt. It would still fit the comparative metrology label, I would think. Btw, it does sems this branch was more or less bona fide untill around 1900. -- Egil 08:40, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Historical measures as seen by pseudoscience]]

message: Claims of Pseudoscientific metrology originated with the revival of interest in the Great Pyramid of Giza, during the Renaissance. Claims about the Great Pyramid and its incorporation of mathematical proportions such as Pi and Phi led to a long procession of scientists to Egypt to determine by measurement the truth of the claims.
The first reports had been from Greeks such as Herodotus, Thales, Solon, Plato, Pytagorus and Agatharchides of Cnidus and were relatively straightforward eyewitness accounts. These were followed up by more reports from Arabs such as Abdullah al Mamun. Tito Livo Burritani made several trips to the Great Pyramid c 1639 and took measurements with John Greaves who was a professor in geometry at Baliol College, Oxford. Sir Isaac Newton attempted to incorporate Greaves work in his theory of gravitation.
The next wave of exploraton began during the Napoleonic wars when a number of French savants who were interested in establishing the metric system visited the Great Pyramid and made more interesting discoveries regarding its orientation and geographic position. Napoleons surveyors found that the pyramid was accurately oriented to the four cardinal points of the compass and therefore used the meridian running through its apex as the base line of their measurements. Having mapped lower Egypt they were suprised to find that this meridian neatly cut the delta region in two and that the diagonals drawn through the pyramid at right angles completely enclosed the entire delta. Jomard found that not only had the apothem or slant side of the pyramid been commented upon classically as being a stadia of 185 m, which was taken as 1/600 of a geographical degree but his own measurements confirmed this.
Upon Napoleons defeat the British took over the job. Working off the measurements of Howard Vyse who had cleared the base and been able to measure the casing stones John Taylor discovered that if he divided the perimeter of the pyramid by twice its height he got a ratio of about 3 1/7. Taylor concluded that perhaps the perimeter had been intended to represent the great circle of the earth and said "That it was to make a record of the measure of the earth that it was built". At this time Sir John Herschel an eminent British astronomer was arguing that British measures were more nearly geo-commensurate than the French metric system. Herschel discovered that the maps of the British Ordinance survey which had been done at a scale of 1:2500, while they bore no relation to the English mile of 5280 feet, agreed well with both the side of the English acre and the Egyptian cubit. At about this same time discoveries of standards of measurement in Mesopotamia offered support of Taylor and Herschels beliefs.
For the next century and a half claims about the amazing properties of the pyramid grew more and more extreme as explorer after explorer cleared and measured the inside and outside of the Pyramid and the heyday of Pyramidiocy merged theories of Biblical revelation such as those of Piazzi Smyth with the Ocult culminating in Peter Tompkins book "Secrets of the Great Pyramid" which included chapters that not merely described the historical interest but went so far as to mention all of the bizarre theories of secret chambers, ufo's initiated wisdom and Biblical prophecy.
 
Although the speculation that there is some direct connection between pseudoscientific ideas, metrology and the anti metric movement needs to be better researched, it is fair to say that those who speculate are often wrong. Those who claim that historical metrology is pseudoscientific miss the point that measurements are scientific, it is unwarrented conclusions drawn from opinion and speculation that cause the problem.
Archeological finds and historical documents support the basic premise that the Great Pyramid is very accurately aligned and constructed. Huge collections of artifacts like the size of fields, Nilometers, rulers, architecture, boats and even various sizes of building stone and inscription grids are referenced in the literature make that much clear. Many statements are not easily determined as true or false by consensus of opinion.
John Taylor, in his 1859 book "The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? & Who Built It?", claimed that the Great Pyramid wasbuilt to make a record of the measure of the Earth.
A person such as Taylor who has studied miles and stadia might say they have been intended to be unit divisions of a degree of the Earth's great circle circumference since they were first defined as standards of measure by the rope stretchers of Mesopotamia and Egypt without invoking much outrage. If a counterposition is taken that it was not until the 17th century that the circumference of the Earth was measured with sufficient accuracy that it could be used as basis for a measure of length then Taylor or Jomard might argue that evidence is widely available that in classical antiquity 75 Roman miles were taken as a degree. They might point out that the concept of a degree as a unit for angle measurement was known by the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations, and that there were many ancient maps where degrees of latitude and longitude were indicated.
If it is argued that it was Taylor or Vyse who inspired Charles Piazzi Smyth to go to Egypt, and subsequently publish his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), where he claimed that the measurements he obtained from the Great Pyramid of Giza indicated a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to 1.001 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects this probably would not be too far fetched.
If it is argued that Taylor is responsible for the fact that from this Smyth extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature, that would be a stretch but not entirely wrong as the ideas of both men are more computational than mensurational. Taylor might have agreed with Smyth on these points but he never expressed such a sentiment.
If it is argued that as Smyth claimed, and presumably believed, the inch was a god-given measure handed down through the centuries from the time of Israel, and that the architects of the pyramid could only have have been directed by the hand of God we enter a different realm which is to some degree the product of the religious fundamentalism of 19th century England.
Smyth supported Taylors idea in that in measuring the pyramid, he found the perimeter of the base to equal the number of days in a year in inches, but Smyth went beyond Taylor when he claimed to have found a numeric relationship between the height of the pyramid in inches to the distance from Earth to the Sun, measured in statute miles. Both men used their findings to argue against the introduction of the metre in Britain.
Some say the first known descrition and practical use of a seconds pendulum was by Galileo Galilei but Flinders Petrie, the well respected father of modern Egyptology was of another opinion. Writing in an article in Nature, 1933Petrie said, "If we take the natural standard of one day divided by 105, the pendulum would be 29.157 inches at lat 30 degrees. Now this is exactly the basis of Egyptian land measures, most precisely known through the diagonal of that squared, being the Egyptian double cubit. The value for this cubit is 20.617 inches, while the best examples in stone are 20.620±0.005inches." Petrie is acknowledged to be right about the value of the royal cubit but others (Stecchini) have argued it was improbable that the Egyptians had any such device.
Though IES Smith in his book "The Pyramids of Egypt" has pointed out that amongst the tools of the Egyptian builders have been found many plumets and devices for measuring verticle angles this does not prove that the Egyptians used them as seconds pendulums. Despite that a common plumet is a pendulum and one with which any builder is well familiar, the length of the second pendulum, at close to a meter, would not have been an Egyptian standard of measure but rather a Mesopotamian standard.
During the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt members of the French Académie des Sciences researching ancient linear measures had found many references to their being derived directly from the circumference of the Earth in classical writings and as others have continued to review their work over the last couple of centuries the body of scientific support for this position has grown.
As some of the standards of measure of Mesopotamia were discovered, various people (Jean-Adolphe Decourdemanche in 1909, August Oxé in 1942) came to the conclusion that the relationship between them was well planned. Livio C. Stecchinidiscusses some of the results in his A History of Measures'The relation among the units of length can be explained by the ratio 15:16:17:18 among the four fundamental feet and cubits. Before I arrived at this discovery, Decourdemanche and Oxé discovered that the cubes of those units are related according to the conventional specific gravities of oil, water, wheat and barley. 
Stecchini shows that the Egyptian measures of length, originating from at least the 3rd millennium BC, were directly derived from the circumference of the earth ).
Stecchini also shows that Eratosthenes in 240 BC could not have himself measured the circumference of the Earth as is claimed because his numbers simply don't bear scrutiny. He clearly depends on a standard of measure no longer in use in his time.
The question of how the early Egyptians, in defining their cubit, could have achieved a degree of accuracy that can only be achieved with either very careful measurement or very sophisticated equipment and techniques would suggest they made careful measurement.
Building on Taylor, Smyth, and Stecchini John F. Neal, in his book All Done With Mirrors (in 2000), came to the conclusion that the foot was the grand unit, and that the common system of the ancient cultures was that the definition of their respective foot is 1/360,000th part of the longitudinal meridian degree of their respective latitudes. 
The odometer described by Vitruvius . is one example of some of the evidence that might be summoned in support of this position. The conclusion of Neals book is:The English foot is the [vestigal] root, or number one, from which all other measures are extrapolated.
The Wikipedia definition for pseudoscience appears to be defined by whatever happens to be  current consensus opinion (of whom is rarely stated) and that what doesn't correspond with consensus opinion is hence unscientific or bogus.  Pseudoscience is a loaded term and, as such, it is in my view rather meaningless.  Today's pseudoscience may prove  scientific/historical fact in the future and, alternatively, what is scientific/historical fact today may someday prove pseudoscience.  With few exceptions, science and history are built upon a body of data that usually aggregates and changes over time.  A less objectionable, less smug, and perhaps more acccurate label might be  unsubstantiated or unproven idea(s) or belief(s)...such labels may be somewhat more cumbersome but they are less pejorative and since described data are in a state of flux, they may ultimately prove more precise.  Having worked in the fields of archaeology and history for more than 30 years, the use of pseudoscience to describe anything in these fields seems unfounded in almost all cases.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by RogerHWerner (talk • contribs) 03:53, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Contribution by User:rktect

message: The problem I have with that section is the lack of an appropriate source. The Nature article itself would be OK, but the section as it stands is sourced only to a chatty piece by a science teacher when he mentions it more-or-less off-hand, plus the section goes further than the source does. I also think that this whole article is problematic in that it is discussing only the pseudoscientific side of a set of ideas, when in fact there was a development of thinking in which ideas on a continuum between hard science and loopy speculation interplayed and were counterposed. I would feel happier about this article if I were sure which field of enquiry it is supposed to sit in. Is it an article about history of ideas? Or what?Itsmejudith (talk) 15:15, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pendulum section 

message: This section was added as a result of a merge tag in article Civilization One hope that won't upset anyone--Gurdjieff (talk) 04:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Megalithic  System 

message: Simple number crunching is not 'science', pseudo or otherwise.  On the other hand, applications of gratuitous commentary suggesting some theory or other gives rise to unfounded science, or at worst, pseudoscience.  However, the sort of commentary that runs with Amateur Metrology ranges from fairly valid scientific observations to wildly unfounded suggestions of a master race or something.
The idea of the 'New Age' is one that a destroyed past age will return to the world, is a recurring common theme in religions and other beliefs.  These come to the front typically before the change of a millennium or a zodiac age (Age of Aquarius).  Parts of the propositions of the various metrologies is to suggest the past age was much more advanced than say, intervening ages or even the present.  The modus operandi is to show that an earth-based measure is left in ancient buildings for the future to see.
The other posit of the New-Age metrology is to show that the author's current race is no doubt inheritance to this fabled society or some other respectable people.  It is much like saying that the English are the lost tribes of the Hebrew, or that individual french settlements are the true Trojans, whence the neighbouring villages are nasty 'France-mans'. (see eg "The Discovery of France" by Graham Robb).
Amateur metrology is then simply a means of discovering evidence, like amateur etymology, etc.  The author shows a large interesting arrangement of numbers, and then posits some commentary that may or may not be entirely scientific.  
Some might observe numbers, and can't help but make certain comments on it.  One might read the introduction to Arthur Berriman's "Historical Metrology" for a clue on this.  Berriman is rather scan on outrageous commentry, but still suggests that things like the Russian foot (at 14.14 in), is somehow 10-sqrt(2).  
John Michell wrote a series of books over several years, like "The View over Atlantis", and "City of Revelations" which deals with metrology to show that the various units in the repitoire is somehow vehicles for numbers to be presented, and it is these numbers that are important.  It's the same sort of thing that the Bible posits.
One should also note that Captain Clarke notes in the report of the lengths of major European measures of 1860, spends some page or so discussing the precise lengths of the Common and Royal cubits, as derived from the Pyramid measures.  No commentary is given to the significance of these lengths.  Clarke went on to produce a geodesic ellipsoid that is only just being displaced.
Gunter's equation of the degree of arc with a length unit, in order to simplify calculations, gives us the Nautical mile.  Cassini extends this by dividing this mile in the traditions of Northern Europe, to 6000 feet, giving a foot so scarsely different to the measured value of the Greek foot, and with pretty much the same sorts of multiples, that one is hard pressed to suppose that this ancient foot is a left-over of a previous system.  
The metric metre then borrows on Gunter's and Cassini's work, but uses a different division of the circle (400 degrees of 100 minutes), and a different idiom for the mile (km divided into 1000 yard-like units).  Since this is entirely different to the traditions inherited from the Romans and ancient germanics, are we to suppose that the Metric system is Pseudo-scientific?
One should not suppose that this is left to ancient measures only.  The sorts of commented number-games one sees in things like Michell and others, one also sees in Barrow "The Anthromorphic Principle", a book of deep physics that suggests that the universe is somehow "just right" for life, man, etc.  --Wendy.krieger (talk) 07:54, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  New Age Metrology, etc 

message: Here's the current version:
"The division of the earth's arc into length is quite old. Gunter suggested it in the seventeen century. Many systems were suggested, including Cassini's (1720) dividing the earth's circle to 360 degrees, of 60 miles of 1000 fathoms of 6 feet. This is the inspiration of the metric system (circle of 400 degrees of 100 km of 1000 metres), the actual measures based on Bessel's circle. It is not all that unreasonable to suggest that this could have not happened in an earlier time. It should be noted that the error in the greek foot lies wholy in the range of the geographic measures (since the earth is not spherical), and that the multiples of it follow the sexagesimal division of the earth. It's a better fit than the known history of the metric metre from the same source.
</ref>"
Ok. First, what is Zupko being used to reference? The bit about inspiration (maybe, a search for inspiration turns up p.43 at )? The bit about it's being a better fit (I doubt it, can't find it searching for fit or better fit)? The bit about the Greek foot (again, can't find mention of this). This is why we want page numbers for books. And 'quite old'? And a link ti Edmund Gunter so the reader has some sort of clue as to who Gunter is belong here in any case. But this section is about ancient linear measures, some pre-Greek, and I'm at a lost why this has been added here as it doesn't seem to relate to the section or maybe even to the article at all.
We also should not use phrases such as "It should be noted" -- see specific guidance on this phrase at WP:EDITORIAL. And Wikipedia should not be stating 'It's a better fit' in Wikipedia's voice. It's fine to attribute it to a named author of course.
Basically this still seems original research and not only that, irrelevant to this article which is about pseudoscientific metrology. The source does not refer to pseudoscientific metrology, another reason why I class this as WP:OR. Dougweller (talk) 08:45, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The division of the geographic mile into feet is attributed by Zupko to Cassini (page 133).   Wendy.krieger (talk) 11:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a minor issue however. And doesn't seem to have anything to do with the topic of the article or the specific issues I've mentioned. Dougweller (talk) 11:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments on what I see as some original research that was placed in the article & put back after I removed it 

message: This article needs more references, and a more objective voice instead of just the author arguing with the subject.
The following individuals are named in this article as perpetrators of pseudoscientific metrology: John Greaves, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Robin Heath, Christopher Knight, Alan Butler.
So I went to the online archives of Skeptic Magazine, Skeptical Inquirer, and Scientific American. After typing all of the above names into the search box on all three websites, I got one hit:
Skeptic Magazine, Volume 11 Number 3
Connecting the Dots to Nowhere - A review of Civilization One: The World is not As You Thought it Was by Christopher Knight and Alan Butler
reviewed by Jason Colavito
A Google search on "Charles Piazzi Smyth" AND pseudoscience produced the following hit: "The Skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience, Volume 2" By Michael Shermer p. 406.
As you can see, this kind of research is a lot of work. (Ideally it should have been done by the original author.)
Zyxwv99 (talk) 16:11, 19 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for Improving this Article