Precision

In her review of "Tracks On The Ocean" by Sara Caputo - Times Literary Supplement, November 15th. 2024 - Christina Thompson alludes to the imprecision of precision itself, which is fair comment. We can achieve extraordinary levels of precision within a given context, as anyone who has had access to a metrology lab and metrologists - myself included - can attest. However, it really is all relative: one person's exactitude is another's ballpark, depending on the terms of reference applied. Context is everything. A woodworker will need precision down to no more than a few hundredths of an inch at the very most, whereas a few thousands of an inch may be too large a margin of error for a an engineer working in metal. To a physicist, nanometre tolerances and measurement will be the order of the day; but even then, the subdivisions of nicety will continue down the rabbit hole into the realms of the subatomic. The fact is that absolute exactitude can never be attained: as with the infinity paradox [blog posts passim], there is no logic in the realm of the infinitely small: hence the weird universe of Quantum Theory. But in the real world of macro stuff, perfectly acceptable degrees of precision can and have been attained. Imprecision is a feature not a fault, and perfection does not exist at any level. Specified tolerances and limits of imprecision define the necessary accuracy of any process. We've done pretty well on these limitations thus far, don't you think? Just a passing thought...