Beyond Measure
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3 months free
Beyond Measure
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Narrated by:
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James Vincent
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By:
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James Vincent
About this listen
THE TIMES SCIENCE BOOK OF THE YEAR
NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
A revelatory and vibrant story of measurement which will make you look at the world around you anew.
'A wildly ambitious book by a formidably talented young writer.'
ROBERT MACFARLANE
'Vivid, epic, and full of curiosities. This is a book to delight and fascinate.'
TIM HARFORD, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add Up
'Beyond Measure offers, with much intellectual flair and style, a bracing new history: how the once innocent urge to quantification took over our lives, our sense of ourselves and the world.'
PANKAJ MISHRA
'The exact value of this book is hard to quantify. Weighty, precise and satisfyingly obsessive, it's also an absolute pleasure to read.'
SIMON GARFIELD, bestselling author of The Timekeepers
We measure rainfall and radiation, the depths of space and the emptiness of atoms, calories and steps, happiness and pain. But how did measurement become ubiquitous in modern life? When did humanity first take up scales and rulers, and why does this practice hold authority over so many aspects of our lives?
Written with vim and dazzling intelligence, James Vincent provides a fresh and original perspective on human history as he tracks our long search for dependable truths in a chaotic universe. Full of mavericks and visionaries, adventure and the unexpected, Beyond Measure shows that measurement has not only made the world we live in, it has made us too.
'An epic story about humankind's relationship with the physical world. Vincent is an erudite and perceptive guide, who with energy and skill weaves history, science and reportage into an enthralling tale.'
ALEX BELLOS
'Telling the story of metrology is not easy [but] Vincent is equal to the task . . . this book is extremely good.'
THE TIMES
'This quirky history is inch-perfect.'
FINANCIAL TIMES
'Gripping.' NEW SCIENTIST
'Worth its weight in gold . . . Enlightening.' OBSERVER
'Fascinating . . . an erudiite and elegant read.' MAIL ON SUNDAY
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.
©2022 James Vincent (P)2022 Faber AudioListeners also enjoyed...
As it won a Times Scienc book of the year award I was expecting more science
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Fantastic book
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- I really enjoyed the chapter on the metric system and how that system came about. And by encompassing the history of measurement, it takes in history, science, and other disciplines to give a history of the world and how measurement has changed all our lives. Numbers may be dry, but they are the only way to tell the truth as opposed to emotional responses.
- The book begins by looking at how the measuring systems evolved, which seems to have occurred by the invention of a writing system, which had to occur for these systems to be built on. Coins or circle tubes were used to record how much could be exchanged for goods, but this required a writing system so that three-dimensional coins or cubes could become two-dimensional storage systems, which is how the first writing systems from Mesopotamia involved.
- The first measurement was the day where even in the Bible there is morning and dusk. But our own bodies have a clock and from this which was something in our subconscious mind before we had any idea of recording or measuring time, we have this embedded in our DNA such as when the hormone of melatonin occurring in our body will lead you to sleep and is in the cyclical rhythms of the nature of many animals. Following this, people knew when it would be the best time to allow seeds and crops to be planted and grow at their best, and from this evolve the seasons.
- Some of the first measurements came from the season, then people began to form 24 hour clocks and calendars began to occur by using something that was consistent and available. Then measurements began to use body parts, and we still have some measurements today, including the cubit, foot, and hand all using body parts to take measurements of the length. However, this wasn’t always consistent – people have different arm and foot lengths.
- Interestingly enough, the first one of the first measurements were also eating seeds and barley corn became the equivalent of a third of an inch in its measurement length and Henry VI or one of the Henry’s said that three of these will become an inch and this is the beginning of how Imperial measurement in the UK and America came about.
- The book then looks at more measurements that were done and designed that were not always consistent around body shapes and parts of the body regarding how we measure grains, then moves onto a much more scientific way of looking at measurements and how these include music and more consistent weights that would deem a more consistent and appropriate lengths. Man began measuring mountains, long distances, and even distances in space. The scientific laws that govern and measure, became more effective in their approach to measurements.
A look at how measurements evolved
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As many of these types of book do, this takes a single question - why do we measure things the way we do? - and follows it through, via many familiar and less well known paths, to show how something we may take for granted is worth paying attention to, because the details are actually pretty interesting even if, for most of us, they don't really matter much on a day to day basis.
This is a very well done example of the genre. No complaints - except, perhaps, for lack of depth on measuring things at quantum levels, and the weird confusions brought to measuring the universe that are still bubbling around the edges of cutting-edge physics via dark matter, dark energy, and the like. Having just finished a book that was pretty good on that stuff, though, this may just have been me. After all, most things we measure are done so in comparison to other things - that goes for books as much as distance, weight or time.
Good stuff
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Fascinating and sharp
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And the author sounds ok at slow speeds. but as I listen to most books at 2.3 or up... i found it very frustrating to have to listen much slower with this work due to the author subtly mumbling or running his words together. This drove me nuts, and has rarely happened before, but if you listen to your books at default speed or no more than 1.5 it'll probably not bother you at all.
For me, if I hadn't been so fascinated by the topic and the writing (both excellent), I'd have given up many times due to the narration. if you think it might bother you too - try listening to the sample in the app at different speeds. it's subtle, but there and you'll definitely notice it when reading for more than a few minutes.
excellent book - narrator not great at speed
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A fascinating listen
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Multidimensional
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Really brilliant - so much to think about!
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Very well written in general, but unfortunately full of clunky similes that distract rather than illuminate, like a catwalk model wearing a Victoria sponge on her face.
Shame really because I loved parts of it.
Would have been a great book if the editor took the finger out
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