On the Problem of Vagueness in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Vagueness is neither uncertainty nor inexactness, though there are some connections, in particular in the social sciences. Mors certa, hora incerta the Romans said. What they meant to say was that the hour of death was uncertain. In another respect, too, namely in measurement, the ‘hora’ was rather ‘incerta’ in the sense of ‘inexact’. The hora was one twelfth of the day, yet, its length varied. The horae were announced by slaves, not by clocks, which did not exist then. The slaves knew what time it was by the length of the shadow cast by the sun, or by the ‘clepshydra’, the water-clock which measured time by means of a given quantity of water slowly dripping through it, or just by their sense of time.