I think the big issue with calibration or measurement in general is the heterogeneity problem: How spicy is a specific dish now really? How would you go about measuring that in a way that abstracts away from the details of the dish itself?
You could imagine perhaps blending a spoonful and then measuring the blended mixture with the scoville scale, but of course, the blending itself induces an element of homogenization that doesn't necessarily map smoothly to the original dish.
However, there is a danger in spurious precision here: since the concept of spiciness itself is somewhat vague, necessarily the terms used to describe spiciness itself are vague. To quote Lord Bacon in his Novum Organum:
"The logical syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are tokens of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (which is the foundation of the matter) are confused and carelessly abstracted from things, nothing built upon them can be firm."
Basically, the stream cannot rise higher than the source: can a firm, consistent and objective measurement be created from a nebulous and uncertain concept?
I fell prey to taking a bet against Big Daddy that I could eat a spoonful of his fourth-hottest sauce and lost - I couldn't speak for about half an hour, and had knots in my stomach for days. He didn't make me sign a consent form, but he did tell me later that he had been required to give an "antidote" to local hospitals for other contestants who had worse reactions than I did.
I think the big issue with calibration or measurement in general is the heterogeneity problem: How spicy is a specific dish now really? How would you go about measuring that in a way that abstracts away from the details of the dish itself?
You could imagine perhaps blending a spoonful and then measuring the blended mixture with the scoville scale, but of course, the blending itself induces an element of homogenization that doesn't necessarily map smoothly to the original dish.
However, there is a danger in spurious precision here: since the concept of spiciness itself is somewhat vague, necessarily the terms used to describe spiciness itself are vague. To quote Lord Bacon in his Novum Organum:
"The logical syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are tokens of notions. Therefore if the notions themselves (which is the foundation of the matter) are confused and carelessly abstracted from things, nothing built upon them can be firm."
Basically, the stream cannot rise higher than the source: can a firm, consistent and objective measurement be created from a nebulous and uncertain concept?
I fell prey to taking a bet against Big Daddy that I could eat a spoonful of his fourth-hottest sauce and lost - I couldn't speak for about half an hour, and had knots in my stomach for days. He didn't make me sign a consent form, but he did tell me later that he had been required to give an "antidote" to local hospitals for other contestants who had worse reactions than I did.
https://www.bigdaddysoriginalbbq.com/