How may we characterize the intrinsic structure of physical quantities such as mass, length, or electric charge? This article shows that group-theoretic methods—specifically, the notion of a free and transitive group action—provide an elegant way of characterizing the structure of scalar quantities, and uses this to give an intrinsic treatment of vector quantities. It also gives a general account of how different scalar or vector quantities may be algebraically combined with one another. Finally, it uses this apparatus to give a simple intrinsic treatment of Newtonian gravitation.

中文翻译：

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关于绝对单位

我们如何表征质量、长度或电荷等物理量的内在结构？本文表明，群论方法（特别是自由传递群作用的概念）提供了一种描述标量结构的优雅方法，并用它来对向量进行内在处理。它还对不同的标量或向量如何以代数方式相互组合进行了一般性说明。最后，它使用这个装置对牛顿引力进行了简单的内在处理。