Zachary Stein
I argue that the historical development of measurement technologies correlates with the evolution of consciousness through a series of phases, roughly coterminous with those posited by Jean Gebser. From the first local measuring rods and bushels, through our globally standardized metric system, to today’s advances in biometrics and psychometrics, measurement technologies have not only shaped humanity’s practices, from science to economics, they also deeply reflect the structures of consciousness that have characterized cultural evolution. Gebser pioneered a method for investigating the evolution of human consciousness by looking into the perspectival structure of works of art and other cultural artifacts. I will undertake something similar by looking at case studies from historical metrology—involving details of the increasingly complex technological instrumentalities deployed for measurement—that exemplify the profound transformations in consciousness that accompany radical innovations in measurement. I also suggest some processes by which metrics shape consciousness, and vis-a-vis, positioning measurement as part of a multi-dimensional dialectic of consciousness evolution. This sets the stage for speculations about how future measurement technologies will impact the evolution of consciousness, with a focus on psychometrics (standardized testing and psychological profiling) and biometrics (customized medicine and retinal security scans). I suggest that we are entering an era of hyper-measurement, when more parts of ourselves and our lives are implicated in complex measurement practices than ever before. The effect will be to deepen the self-referentiality and multi-perspectivalism of post-modernity, and to hasten the coming of emergent integral a-perspectival forms of praxis, problem-focsed metrological pluralisms, and the ever louder reassertion of the inevitable and ineliminable immeasurables.
Dr. Zachary Stein