Why get fanatical about something mathematical?

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Warwick Cairns (imperial) v Derek Pollard (metric)

Plans to abolish imperial measurements in the UK were officially dropped this week by Brussels this week, much to the delight of "metric martyrs". But why do we got so passionate about cold, hard units of measurement, asks Warwick Cairns?

It's nearly a decade since Britain officially "went metric" - or mostly metric, apart from road signs, beer glasses and one or two other special cases.

It's well over a century since the change was first mooted in Parliament. Yet after all this time, passions still run extraordinarily high on both sides of the argument.

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There's still a UK Metric Association, dedicated to pushing through final, total metrication. There are still "metric martyrs" - die-hard opponents prepared to face criminal charges rather than sell their bananas by the kilo.

You could sort of understand it, if people as a whole, or just British people, weren't keen on change in general. But over the same space of time we've embraced all sorts of other changes without a second thought.

We swapped our VCRs for DVDs and our cathode-ray televisions for LCD flatscreens. We got microwaves and dishwashers, up-to-date hairstyles and cars, changed our mobiles and the cut of our trousers, all to keep up with the times.

Fruit and veg sellers refused to use metric measures..

But when it comes to measurements, things are altogether different - and always have been. Often when a government has decided that its people might be better served by swapping their traditional system for a new one, many of those people have been less than enthusiastic, and often surprisingly stubborn about it.

For many people, changing one way you measure things seems to be much more than a simple practical step. This is because at the heart of every system of measurement lies a whole way of seeing the world.

Every culture in the word has - or has had - traditional measures, with roots in the far distant past, when Neolithic farmers would measure the length of their fields by pacing them out, or the height of their cattle by "walking" up them with their hands.

These measures have been shaped by millennia of history - like the mile (mille passus), pound (libra pondo) and inch (uncia) we get from the Romans - and then altered and adapted over countless generations to suit everyday human proportions and purposes.

...and some were prosecuted

The result is that most of the world's traditional systems end up being remarkably similar. The English foot, for example, is almost identical to the Japanese Kanejaku, and both are as long as the sole of an average man's shoe.

But because of the way they've come about, what you don't tend to get from traditional measures is neatness, order or scientific rigour.

And if you think of the world in traditional measures, then you think of it in a way that's broadly traditional, and none too fussed about strict adherence to logically thought-out principles. Whereas if you think of the world in a metric way, your perception is somewhat different.

This was why, for the French revolutionaries, traditional measures had to go. For them, old units like the pied de Roi (King's Foot) kept people chained to ignorance and superstition, and had to be swept away for Reason to take hold.

And that, pretty much, has been the argument between the two sides ever since.

Metric is by far the best and most consistent for the world's scientists and engineers and it often appeals also to those who are tidy-minded, who like the idea that life is run according to ordered principles.

French resistance

Traditional systems, meanwhile, appeal to those who value a living link to history and prehistory (plus lots of handy human-scale units) - but they also appeal to bloody-minded individualists who just enjoy sticking two fingers up at bureaucrats' neat plans.

BIG IN JAPAN Shakkanho is the traditional system of measurement It dates back to ancient China Replaced by metric in 1924 It was forbidden in 1966 But it is still used today, chiefly in agriculture and carpentry

The tidy-minded versus the bloody-minded: it is an argument in which the two sides hardly speak the same language; and it is one that - if historical precedents are anything to go by - is likely to run and run.

In France, decades after the Revolution, people remained so hostile to the metric system that Napoleon eventually allowed them to go back to the old "mesures usuelles".

It was only after Napoleon went, and a government of hardcore modernisers got in, that metric came back; and only when the full force of the law came down on them that the people saw that the game was up, and did what they were told.

But even now, in street markets, people still ask for their pommes in livres - even though the livre is now a nominally metric one of 500g.

The pound in weight is not going to disappear from sight, after all

In 1924, Japan officially abandoned its ancient Shakkanho measurement system and "went metric". However, people took so little notice that they had to do it all over again in 1966.

Despite this, large areas of life continue to operate in Shakkanho - and although, in theory, it's against the law to use it for official purposes, it's creeping back even there, with the 2005 census allowing people, once more, to describe their properties in traditional units.

Traditional versus metric: there's much more at stake here than simple convenience.

And short of both sides agreeing to disagree, it's likely that there'll be "metric martyrs" - and their opponents - for some time yet to come.

Warwick Cairns is author of About the Size of It, which supports traditional measurements.