Measure
&
Estimate

So when humans realised that they could use numbers

for all sorts of different kinds of measurement,

they quickly realised that it would be useful

if everyone around could agree on sets of units,

shared definitions.

Of course,

early measurements were associated with the human body,

being as how they usually had that with them,

the length of a foot,

or the pace of a yard.

But these were very approximate,

inevitably giving advantage to those with long legs and big feet.

What was close enough had to be agreed,

so standards needed to be defined locally

and eventually enforced by law,

until such time as their horizons expanded

to the extent that they needed to form international agreements

on standards, sometimes even defined

with the precision associated with and assumed from

the decay of an atom.

Extraordinarily precise

microscopic measurements have been made possible

by technical advances,

but always there is some acceptable leeway

beyond current levels of precision,

and as the chalk on mathematicians blackboards

leads science into ever more minimal areas,

when they need definitions of measure

for dimensions down at quantum levels

they can find that things start to get a little stretchy.

It's hard to measure Planck units

and tiny things like tiny strings.

Measurement defines the edge

of what is tangible in mathematics,

and as prior certainties about space are swallowed by space time

and entanglement seems to collapse

any kind of space at all

when people start talking about stuff with no mass,

it can be seen that measure is not intrinsic to objects

made of some kind of material,

but an experience of the one who views it

and understands it in a shared human context.

But those rarefied levels of definition

on the intangible edges

have little practical use in people's experience

of very tangible lives

At one level or another we are all happy

to accept some degree of estimation

that is appropriate for whatever situation we are in,

from close round numbers to however many decimal places,

but we should always be aware of

when an estimate is no more than a wild guess.