Later this year the General Conference of the International Committee for Weights and Measures is scheduled to meet outside Paris to discuss a major metrological question that has provoked strong passions and extensive research: whether to keep the current artifact-based kilogram standard or replace it with an absolute standard. But discussions of how to connect units and standards have flared passions and inspired research since ancient times—and not only in the West. In the past few years, for instance,scholars of early China have unraveled an episode involving metrological change in the Jin dynasty(AD 265–420) that sheds light on a complex and unique blend of metrology, musicology, and politics in ancient Chinese courts.
Weights and measures have a long and venerable history in China.1 Relics showing that the ancient Chinese passion for defining and maintaining proper order extended to their measurement practices date back to the Neolithic era in the...
