Pseudoscientific metrology

In 1637, John Greaves, professor of geometry at Gresham College, made his first of several studies in Egypt and Italy, making numerous measurements of buildings and monuments, including the Great Pyramid.

[1] These activities fuelled many centuries of interest in metrology of the ancient cultures by the likes of Isaac Newton and the French Academy.

[4] Livio C. Stecchini claims in his A History of Measures:The relation among the units of length can be explained by the ratio 15:16:17:18 among the four fundamental feet and cubits.

Before I arrived at this discovery, Decourdemanche and Oxé discovered that the cubes of those units are related according to the conventional specific gravities of oil, water, wheat and barley.

[1]Stecchini makes claims that imply that the Egyptian measures of length, originating from at least the 3rd millennium BC, were directly derived from the circumference of the earth with an amazing accuracy.

Christopher Knight and Alan Butler further develop the work of Smyth's and Stecchini's "Grand Scheme" in their Civilization One hypothesis, which describes a megalithic system of units.

Although the megalithic yard is the work of Alexander Thom, Knight and Butler make a novel contribution by speculating on how the MY may have been created by using a pendulum calibrated by observing Venus.

[6] Their book states that "The Sun, the Moon and the Earth all conform to a 'grand design' that is also evident in the Megalithic structures that are scattered across the British Isles and western Europe.

Similarly, they argue that this theoretical Megalithic pint, if filled with barley dry seeds, weighs on average a number close to 453.59 grams, which is the exact value of the avoirdupois pound.

Publications in pseudoscientific metrology receive little, if any, attention from mainstream scholarship, by nature of being intended for the popular mass market.

[16] Karlene Jones-Bley also denies the existence of such a precise unit of measurement during the Neolithic period: "the suggestion put forth by Thom that there was a 'megalithic yard' uniform to 0.1 mm from Brittany to the Orkneys cannot be accepted".

[19] A review in The Guardian newspaper of Who Built the Moon by Butler and Knight refers to the authors as "an ad man specialising in consumer psychology and an engineer turned astrologer, astronomer and playwright".

Jason Colavito, in a review in Skeptic Magazine, wrote "Crammed into just over 250 pages are so many unbelievable assertions and unproven speculations that it would take a book-sized rebuttal to do adequate justice to this triumph of numerology over science."