A Metric for Success

One of my greatest regrets is that I still think in feet, cups, and Fahrenheit. Yes, I am a huge nerd.

Even after realizing how awesome metric is I still maintained that it wasn't worthwhile to switch. It didn't seem to matter what units people learned All the science that matters is done in metric anyways. I swore to raise my children to think in metric just because it's so logical but there seemed no reason to inconvenience the rest of America.

I recently had a change of heart. The metric system is not only logical, it is conducive to the development of scientific thought.

Metric suggests patterns. If I understand how length is measured, converting grams to kilograms isn't a huge problem. A person schooled in metric will assume that the universe functions pretty much the same everywhere, a key axiom of current scientific thought. Compare this to the Imperial system. If I tell you that there are 8 pints in a gallon you'd still not be able to guess how many feet are in a mile.

All units are assigned arbitrarily with no set pattern. It implies a system which can't be reasoned or modeled but must be memorized.Scientific thought assumes patterns and seeks out a way to understand them. "Imperial" thought is magical, religious thinking, that the universe is unknowable and we must be told by an authority what to believe.

Which brings me to a second related point, that metric encourages independent thought. To learn the Imperial system you must go to some authority (a teacher, dictionary, Wikipedia, etc) to be given the answer. Calculations in metric on the other hand are so simple that it's often easier to perform them than to look up the solution. Not that calculations can't be performed in Imperial, it's just that usually it would be simpler to look it up.

Say for example I ask how long it would take to boil a liter of water from 25C to 100C given a stove that provided heat at a known rate, compared to the same question about a gallon of water from 70F to 212F. The first question can be pretty easily approximated and solved. The second can be solved but not as quickly as it would take to ask the question of some known source. Hence American cookbooks littered with seemingly arbitrary rules of thumb.

The differences seem minor at first, but small things can have huge consequences. I'd rather our children grew up thinking just a little more critically about the world. I've changed my vote, I think America needs to convert to SI. There's no time to lose.

And maybe someday we'll advance far enough to merit CGS. Ah, but I dream.