A Philosophical Critique of the Distinction of Representational and Pragmatic Measurements on the Example of the Periodic System of Chemical Elements

Measurement theory in (Hand in The world through quantification. Oxford University Press, 2004 ; Suppes and Zinnes in Basic measurement theory. Psychology Series, 1962 ) is concerned with the assignment of number to objects of phenomena. Representational aspect of measurement is the extent to which the assigned numbers and arithmetics truthfully represent the underlying objects and their relations, and is characteristic to natural sciences; pragmatic aspect is the extent to which the assigned numbers serve purposes other than representing the underlying phenomena, and is characteristic to social sciences (Hand in The world through quantification. Oxford University Press, 2004 ). Here I criticise this distinction of representational and pragmatic measurements on the basis of the earlier history of the periodic system of chemical elements, viewed in terms of a practice based philosophy of science by Rein Vihalemm. I argue that the periodic system, although a natural scientific system interpretable as a measurement system, has considerable, in Hand’s terms pragmatic, aspects in it. Those aspects include: tampering with the material measurement results for the theoretical ideal of systematicity; adopting metaphysical assumptions that cannot be experimentally proven, like individuality of elements and atomicity; theoretical construction of the abstract entity—element—as the reference of the measurement system amenable to mathematically elegant ordering. Contrary to Suppes and Zinnes (Basic measurement theory. Psychology Series, 1962 ) I also argue for the dependence of the assigned numerical system on the material-procedural base of the measurement.