Aside from the great work performed here by our colleague, Pat, I feel I must add another dimension to this discussion.
THE major flaw when discussing this topic of 'system of units' is the fact that throughout history (as rightfully pointed out by Pat and others here here and there) there has been NO REAL effort to treat this from a FRAMEWORK's point-of-view! What I mean is that cgs, mks, mksa, etc these are all wimpy attempts at devising a TRUE SYSTEM of measurements. We STILL lack TRUE scientific effort in this regard! Perhaps BIPM, CGPM and the likes would be the right forum for this, but CLEARLY they have simply refused to take on this responsibility! It's quite frustrating for one to see that despite our having a good name for this process (metrology!) it is significantly marred by politics, conservatism and plain simple lack of STRATEGIC DIRECTION! I find it (quite frankly) appalling that in this day and age one would still be "fighting" to get through to these bodies about the necessity of conducting such fundamental and VITAL foundational work! Had they taken upon themselves to do THAT VERY THING and we would certainly NOT be in this incredible mess! I'd like to therefore submit that until this critical mission is finally addressed there would be REAL minute hope of a TRULY GLOBAL pool of standards to take hold in our planet's societies! Until this issue continues to be treated *politically*, as opposed to **scientifically**, we will continue to have to endure stupidities such as FFU, WOMBAT, ifp, whatever... So, in this sense we are ALSO in need of an entity that would take this responsibility, i.e. to come up with a TRUE field of study (that should be metrology itself IMHO) in which frameworks are discussed and defined FOR ONCE AND FOR ALL! Only after the above can we, scientists, really dream of a TRULY universal, stable and *definitive* "system of units". The SI system could evidently be a good departing point for that, but it CERTAINLY IS NOT the ideal answer **yet**! So, to conclude my rather long topic discussion on fundamentals, perhaps there is a lot more to be done than just acquire US' acceptance of the SI system. What we may truly need is a DEFINITIVE, AUTHORITATIVE treatment of this issue that would have to be embraced BY ALL, just like math or physics themselves are! I.e. there would be absolutely NO DEBATE, NO SUBJECTION TO POLITICAL LANDSCAPES concerning this issue any longer. For that to happen IMHO we'd require to UNCOUPLE this topic from the influence of political systems and bring it to its true, real realm, that of PURE SCIENCE! And then, let the dogs bark all they want! Since THEN, it will be like 2+2 is 4, like it or not!!!... Regards, Marcus On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 17:14:42 Pat Naughtin wrote: ... >Dear Ralph, > >This is an updated version of a piece that I wrote to list the many ways to >describe old ways of measuring... ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
