Abstract

The results achieved in the natural sciences due to their mathematisation encouraged many to apply mathematics also in disciplines traditionally regarded as unamenable to mathematical treatment. Various critics consider the use of measurement in such disciplines as unsound. They hold any sentenoe which states relations between sociological or humanistic quantities as only spuriously meaningful. Is this criticism justified? Under what conditions can measurement be fruitfully applied outside the domain of the exact sciences? What does it mean to measure something? These problems are given consideration.