  A brief summary of the objections to the relational nature of inertial mass,
gravitational mass and electric charge is presented. The objections are refuted
by showing that the measurement process of comparing an instrument reference
clock and a reference rod both obeying the laws of physics to a system obeying
the same laws of physics results in relational quantities: inertial mass,
gravitational mass and electric charge appear only as ratios. This means that
scaling of the absolute inertial mass of every object in the universe by the
same factor is unobservable (likewise for gravitational mass and electric
charge). It is shown that the measurement process does not separate the
instrument parameters from the system parameters. Instead a measurement
produces functions of fundamental, dimensionless parameters such as the fine
structure constant, electron-proton mass ratio and the proton gyro-magnetic
factor. It is shown that the measurement of Planck's constant also results in
such a function of these dimensionless parameters. Application of this analysis
to the "absolute" Planck units shows that they too are functions only of
relational quantities. Analysis focuses initially on non-relativistic systems
for the sake of clarity and simplicity. The results are then extended to
relativistic systems described by the Dirac equation and the Einstein field
equations of general relativity. The results support the assertion that
instrument parameters cannot be separated from system parameters even in
classical mechanics.

Classical Physics;General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology