Spirit, air, and quicksilver: The search for the "real" scale of temperature Author(s): Hasok Chang Source: Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2001), pp. 249-284 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hsps.2001.31.2.249 Accessed: 20-02-2017 09:43 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences This content downloaded from 130.225.98.206 on Mon, 20 Feb 2017 09:43:39 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms HASOK CHANG* Spirit, air, and quicksilver: The search for the “real” scale of temperature The thermometer, as it is at present construed, cannot be applied to point out the exact proportion of heat....It is indeed generally thought that equal divisions of its scale represent equal tensions of caloric; but this opinion is not founded on any well decided fact. Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, 1802 1 HOW CAN WE trust our measuring instruments? This has been a persistent ques- tion for practicing scientists as well as historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science.