Abstract:
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For those of us that work in metrology, it seems that "in the beginning, there was measurement" and most things (if not everything) were built around it. In fact, Galileo sentenced "measure whatever is measurable, and make it measurable whatever is not", and Lord Kelvin, another great metrologist said "to measure is to know". More recently the gurus of quality, like Deming said "what you cannot measure, you cannot improve". Now, even beyond the limits of National Metrology Institutes or metrology laboratories, in the industrial field, we metrologists say that "measurement is essential for knowledge, knowledge is essential for control and control is essential for quality and productivity". But some critical day of existential crisis, a metrologist asks him/herself: Is measurement really essential for control? And the dooms of existential doubt come about his/her conscious being: Do nature (the wisest mind) measures every process for being able to control it? Perhaps not. Does our body control its blood pressure and temperature in order to keep us stable and alive? We would say that the different glands and feed-back systems make some type of measurement, but this is a different type of measurement than that described in the International Vocabulary of Metrology! Does a water drop measures or controls its temperature on a hot day before it decides that is time to evaporate? Certainly not, but another more basic control mechanism takes place and the process is controlled with no measurement or, if we force and stretch the definitions, with measurements considered in a very wide sense. Out of examples as the perfect process of water evaporation, the existential anguish could produce, as an extreme, the reflection that for process control the best measurement is that that is not necessary! Though apparently extreme, this reflection is not far from the truth in some real cases like closed loop control systems and some others. In these cases, the fundamental role of metrology, traceability and other concepts could be seriously questioned, with very sound arguments. The paper reflects on some real and some hypothetical situations in which the role of metrology has to be revised and reinvented. Fortunately, for our sake, there seems to be always a role for metrology, whatever the world essence is.
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