Abstract

In his Scientific Representation (2008), van Fraassen argues that measuringis a form of representation. In fact, every measurement pinpoints itstarget in accordance with specific operational rules within an already-constructedtheoretical space, in which certain conceptual interconnections can be represented.Reichenbach’s 1920 account of coordination is particularly interesting in thisconnection. Even though recent reassessments of this account do not do fulljustice to some important elements lying behind it, they do have the merit offocusing on a different aspect of his early work that traditional interpretations ofrelativized a priori principles have unfortunately neglected in favour of a more“structural” role for coordination. In Reichenbach’s early work, however, the ideaof coordination was employed not only to indicate theory-specific fundamentalprinciples such as the ones suggested in the literature on conventional principlesin science, but also to refer to more “basic” assumptions. In Reichenbach, theseprinciples are preconditions both of the individuation of physical magnitudes and oftheir measurement, and, as such, they are necessary to approach the world in the firstinstance. This paper aims to reassess Reichenbach’s approach to coordination and tothe representation of physical quantities in light of recent literature on measurementand scientific representation.