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The artefact that has defined the kilogram since 1889 is to be retired and the kilogram will instead be defined by fixing the value of the Planck constant. In this chapter, I detail some of the elements of this reform, believing that the case study should prompt philosophers to reassess the role scientific standards play in the progress of the physical sciences. A metrological account of scientific standards should explain metrology’s more theoretical motivations and also acknowledge its empirical contribution to the physical sciences. I present three theses towards this end. I develop a more thoroughgoing and yet much weaker version of Bridgman’s operational attitude. I present a picture of the physical sciences united by metrology. Finally, I present the case for a quiet form of realism that attempts to accommodate both the more theoretical and the more pragmatic motivations of the metrologist.

Science and religion are most usually compared on epistemic grounds: what do they tell us about the natural world and what methods do they use to determine those truths? The suggestion here is that the two fields should be compared on moral grounds: how do scientific and religious experiences affect the way a person lives his or her life? A hypothesis is presented in this vein: engaging in scientific work or education alters a person’s moral outlook on everyday matters. In this chapter, I articulate and motivate this claim by framing it against both theological and philosophical debate. I explore how it might be tested as a claim in moral psychology. The resulting vision presented here is of science and religion engaged in dialogue—at times necessarily embroiled—not only about the nature of the world, but regarding how best we navigate our way in it.

The fundamental constants of nature, as presented by modern science, can be conceived as natural measures of the universe. In comparison, the standards of the International System of Units, including the kilogram and the meter, are mind-made and hand-crafted to meet the demands of human life. In this paper, the gap between the natural and the conventional is squeezed from two directions. In the first place, we come to understand why the metric measures were originally conceived, by the best of scientists, as being “taken from nature” and “in no way arbitrary”. The kilogram of yesteryear was anchored in yesteryear's science and is reasonably considered natural with respect to that science. We also review a contemporary debate amongst physicists that questions whether any quantity, being necessarily written with units, can be truly fundamental. Modern notions of a fundamental constant are put under the spotlight; the kilogram emerges as bound up with contemporary science today as ever it was. In the picture being painted here, our measures are drawn as dynamic entities, epistemic tools that develop hand-in-hand with the rest of science, and whose significance goes much further than a metal artefact dangled from an abstract number line.