ABSTRACT Accounts of how the concept of temperature has evolved typically cast the story as ancillary to the history of the thermometer or the history of the concept of heat. But then, because the history of temperature is not treated as a subject in its own right, modern associations inadvertently get read back into the historical record. This essay attempts to lay down an authoritative record not of what people in the past thought about what we call ‘temperature’ but of what they thought about what they called ‘temperature’ (or one of its cognates), from medieval times to today. It is found that invention of the thermometer had little impact on the concept of temperature. Much more significant were Fahrenheit’s invention of a reliable instrument and William Thomson’s effort to make a degree of temperature a unit of measure. Overlapping definitions of temperature then emerged in the late nineteenth century, and twentieth-century scientific developments forced physicists to reconsider temperature’s conceptual boundaries. It turns out that the concept of temperature has evolved through stages that correspond to four increasingly sophisticated types of measurement. Its maturity sheds light on the philosophy of conceptual change.

中文翻译：

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“温度”的历史：测量概念的成熟

摘要 关于温度概念如何演变的描述通常将故事作为温度计历史或热概念历史的附属。但是，由于温度的历史本身并没有被视为一个主题，现代联想无意中被重新读回了历史记录。这篇文章试图建立一份权威记录，不是关于过去人们对我们所谓的“温度”的看法，而是他们对从中世纪到今天的所谓“温度”（或其同源词之一）的看法。发现温度计的发明对温度的概念影响不大。更重要的是 Fahrenheit 发明了一种可靠的仪器，以及 William Thomson 努力使温度成为测量单位。19 世纪后期出现了温度的重叠定义，20 世纪的科学发展迫使物理学家重新考虑温度的概念界限。事实证明，温度的概念已经经历了与四种日益复杂的测量类型相对应的阶段。它的成熟揭示了概念变化的哲学。