WIENER,NORBERT ON THE THEORY OF MEASUREMENT (1914, 1915, 1921)

These words, written by Norbert Wiener in 1919 when he was 24 years old, appear near the end of the third of three extraordinary papers on the theory of relations and measurement that he began before his twentieth birthday. The papers use the notation of Principia Mathematica, which is fairly inaccessible to modern readers. However, Wiener's contributions to measurement theory deserve to be remembered because they include important concepts that were rediscovered by others and now have a central place in the representational theory of measurement and in graph theory. Our purpose is to recount in modern terms Wiener's work in these areas. © 1992.