An interdisciplinary history of standardized measurements.
Measurement is all around us--from the circumference of a pizza to the
square footage of an apartment, from the length of a newborn baby to the
number of miles between neighboring towns. Whether inches or miles,
centimeters or kilometers, measures of distance stand at the very
foundation of everything we do, so much so that we take them for
granted. Yet, this has not always been the case.
This book reaches back to medieval Italy to speak of a time when
measurements were displayed in the open, showing how such a deceptively
simple innovation triggered a chain of cultural transformations whose
consequences are visible today on a global scale. Drawing from literary
works and frescoes, architectural surveys, and legal compilations,
Emanuele Lugli offers a history of material practices widely overlooked
by historians. He argues that the public display of measurements in
Italy's newly formed city republics not only laid the foundation for now
centuries-old practices of making, but also helped to legitimize local
governments and shore up church power, buttressing fantasies of
exactitude and certainty that linger to this day.
This ambitious, truly interdisciplinary book explains how measurements,
rather than being mere descriptors of the real, themselves work as
powerful molds of ideas, affecting our notions of what we consider
similar, accurate, and truthful.
