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Karl Pearson

110 quotes

“Heredity. Given any organ in a parent and the same or any other organ in its offspring, the mathematical measure of heredity is the correlation of these organs for pairs of parent and offspring... The word organ here must be taken to include any characteristic which can be quantitatively measured.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) first seen 1896 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution III: Regression, Heredity and Panmixia", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series A, Vol. 187 (1896) p. 259.
“[M]y axiom runs as follows: "The whole is not identical with a part." This axiom leads us at once to a problem. What relation has the part to the whole?”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I simply assert that the universe alters, is "becoming;" what it is becoming I will not venture to say. ...the individual too is altering, is not only a "being" but also a "becoming." These alterations... I shall—merely for convenience—term life.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What relation has the life of the individual to the life of the universe? ...The former is absolutely subordinate, inconceivably infinitesimal compared with the latter. The becoming of the latter bears not the slightest apparent reference to the becoming of the former. ...The one seems finite, limited, temporal, the other by comparison infinite, boundless, eternal. This disparity has forced itself upon the attention of man ever since his first childlike attempts at thought.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The "Eternal Why" begins to haunt his mind; "Why... am I here?" he asks. What relation do I, a part, bear to the whole—the sum of all things material and spiritual? What connection has the finite with the infinite? the temporal with the eternal?”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Primitive man... rushes to the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself infinite; that he, man, is not altogether finite, and so he constructs a doctrine of the soul and its immortality. Then he builds up myths, superstitions, primitive religions, dogmas, whereby the infinite is made subject to the finite—floating on this huge bladder of man's supposed immortality. The universe is given a purpose, and that purpose is man—the whole is made subordinate to the part. That is the first solution of the problem, the keystone of most concrete religions.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[D]efinition... Religion is the relation of the finite to the infinite. ...is the relation. ...[T]here is only one relation, there can be only one religion. ...only so far true as it actually explains the relation of the finite to the infinite. In so far as it builds up an imaginary relation between finite and infinite it is false. ...[S]ince no existing religion lays out before us fully the relation of finite and infinite, all systems of religion are of necessity but half truths. ...not whole falsehoods, for many... may have made... small advance towards the solution...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great danger... not content with our real knowledge of the relation of the finite to the infinite, they slur over our vast ignorance by the help of the imagination. Myth supplies the place of true knowledge where we are ignorant of the connection between finite and infinite. Hence... most concrete systems of religion present us with a certain amount of knowledge but a great deal of myth.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ur [small] knowledge of the relation of finite to infinite... is... continually increasing—science and philosophy are continally presenting... broader views of the relation of man to nature and of individual thought to abstract thought.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It follows... that... in every concrete religion the knowledge element ought to increase and the myth element decrease or... every concrete religion ought to be in a state of development.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[S]mall as our increase in knowledge may be, concrete systems of religion have not kept pace with it. They persist in explaining by myth, portions of the relation of... which we have true knowledge. Hence we see the danger, if not the absolute evil of any myth at all.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An imaginary explanation... too often impedes the true explanation when man has attained it. This gives rise to the so-called contests of religion and science or of religion and philosophy—the unintelligible conflicts of "faith" and "reason" which can only arise in the minds of those, who cannot perceive clearly the distinction between myth and knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The holding of a myth explanation of any problem whereon mankind has attained true knowledge is what I term enslaved thought or dogmatism.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The rejection of all myth explanation, the reception of all ascertained truths with regard to the relation of the finite to the infinite is what I term freethought or true religious knowledge. ...[T]he freethinker ...possesses more real religion, more of the relation of the finite to the infinite than any mere believer in myth; his very knowledge makes him in the highest sense of the word a religious man.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That it does not pay to gamble has been the oft repeated theme of the moralist, and has been demonstrated with much brave show of symbols by mathematicians from Lagrange to De Morgan and onwards.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While the moralists have boldly asserted that the service of the goddess Chance leads to a complete demoralisation of her worshippers... the mathematicians... start from the hypothesis that gambling is a game of chance—chance being defined in their own perfectly clear and definite sense. My object... is to show that chance in this sense... as it applies to the tossing of an unloaded coin, has no application to Monte Carlo .”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific conception of chance is that of a measure based on experience; a knowledge of the average results of many events is used to replace ignorance of the result of any individual event. ...The judgment which Science gives in this case is decisive; judged by the so called "permanences," or runs of colour, Monte Carlo roulette is no true worship of the goddess at all.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“25,000 tosses of a shilling occupied a good portion of my vacation and... gave me... a bad reputation in the neighbourhood... A friend and former pupil supplemented... 8200 penny trials and the drawing of 9000 tickets from a bag while another kindly provided... nearly 23,000 drawings of coloured and numbered counters. In all these cases the results were in... strikingly close agreement with theory.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In my enthusiasm Monte Carlo appeared to me in a new light; it was clearly a scientific laboratory preparing material for the natural philosopher.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he records of the tables are published in... Le Monaco and issued weekly in Paris... eight weeks roulette gave a grand total of 33,000 events. ...M. Blanc deserved a niche in the temple of science and Le Monaco a shelf in every mathematician's library.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[R]andom spinning being assumed, the distribution of chance in the game depends upon the mechanical perfection of the teetotum; it must be equally likely to fall on all its thirty-seven sides, i.e. the frequency of all the numbers must in the long run be very nearly the same.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e have an equal number of black and red possibilities... Thus in a very great number of throws there ought to be 50 per cent of both. ...In no case... are the results exactly reached, but in all the cases of large numbers we have but small deviations from 50 per cent. Thus 16,141 roulette throws give slightly better results than 12,000 and slightly worse results than 24,000 tosses. We notice that... 16,019 roulette throws give nearly the worst percentage 50.27 instead of 50.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[F]or every type of experiment there is a numerical quantity, depending partly on the chance of the single event succeeding, and partly on the total number of the trials of it, which we may term the . ... it gives us a measure of the frequency with which deviations of various sizes will occur.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e find out of 16,019 trials, 8053 red numbers instead of 8009 or 8010. We have a deviation of 43 to 44. The standard deviation is about 63; a deviation as great as or greater than 44 would occur in about half the number of times in which 16,019 returns were examined. It presents therefore nothing of the remarkable or improbable.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I felt somewhat taken aback. ...to have hit upon a month of roulette ...so improbable ...that it would only occur on the average once in 167,000 years of continuous roulette playing.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The absence of the improbable, the redundancy of the probable, is just as much conclusive evidence against conformity with scientific law as the too frequent occurrence of the improbable itself.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No statements of mere averages... are of the least avail against our statistics. Fluctuations from the averages are the sole reliable test...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Monte Carlo roulette, if judged by returns which are published... is, if the laws of chance rule, from the standpoint of exact science the most prodigious miracle of the nineteenth century.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e are forced to accept... that the random spinning of a roulette manufactured and daily readjusted with extraordinary care is not obedient to the laws of chance, but is chaotic in its manifestations.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]e appeal to the French Académie des Sciences, to obtain from its secretary, M. Bertrand... a report on the colour runs of the Monte Carlo roulette tables for... 1892. Should he confirm the conclusion... that these runs do not obey the scientific theory of chance, then science must reconstruct its theories to suit these inconvenient facts...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is an old German proverb: "Death has no calendar," which taken in conjunction with our... "Death is no respecter of persons," strongly marks the folk conception... as of one who obeys no rule of time, or of place, or of age, or of sex, or of household...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This idea of Death as the lawless one... who strikes at random, arose early in mediaeval tradition, and is represented in the well known Dances of Death... Parallel with this notion... has run in the mind of the folk a vague idea of Chance as that which obeys no rule and defies all measure and prediction. The two conceptions cross one another in the medieval representation of Death seizing the gambler's dice-box and casting the dice with him for his life.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chance... the origin of the word itself is very possibly related to the falling of the dice from their box,—and certainly the first attempts at a theory of Chance arose from the general interest in gambling with dice.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[B]ear these points in mind, the association of Death and Chance, the notion of both as chaotic in their action, and their embodiment in a great artistic ideal—the Dance of Death—which gave so much colouring to mediaeval thought and life. We find this sombre notion everywhere—on the church walls, on the bridges, in the engravings and s, but as well in the sermons, the poetry, and the very turn of folk-sentiment.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The shadow of death, more strongly even than blood or nation, maketh mankind akin; it arouses sympathy and understanding, which surmount all the barriers of caste and station.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The old Dances of Death supplied what fails so much in our modern life—an artistic representation appealing to all classes of at least one experience common to the whole of humanity.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Standing in 1875 on the well known wooden bridge at Luzern, with its pictures of the Dance of Death, it struck me that something might be done to resuscitate the mediaeval conception of the relation between Death and Chance and to express it in a more modern scientific form. ...[M]y aim in this essay is to place before the reader a modern conception of the Dance of Death.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]ur conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. Where we cannot predict, where we do not find order and regularity, there we should now assert... that something else than Chance is at work. What we are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law, and one the nature of which can... be closely predicted.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is not theory, but actual statistical experience, which forces us to the conclusion that, however little we know of what will happen in the individual instance, yet the frequency of a large number of instances is distributed round the mode in a manner more and more smooth and uniform the greater the number of individual instances. When this distribution round the mode does not take place... then we assert that some cause other than chance is at work.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our conception of chance is one of law and order in large numbers; it is not that idea of chaotic incidence which vexed the mediaeval mind.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Formerly men had belief as to the supersensuous and thought they had knowledge of the sensuous. The science of the future, while agnostic as to the supersensuous, will replace knowledge by belief in the perceptual sphere, and reserve the term knowledge for the conceptual sphere—the region of their own concepts and ideas...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That this change of view as to the basis of science cannot take place without misunderstanding, or without giving an opportunity to those who dislike science to decry its weaknesses, is only natural. To change the basis of operations during a campaign always gives a chance to the enemy, but the chance must be risked if thereby we place ourselves permanently in a position of greater strength...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the reader questions whether there is still war between science and dogma, I must reply that there always will be as long as knowledge is opposed to ignorance. To know requires exertion, and it is intellectually easiest to shirk effort altogether by accepting phrases which cloak the unknown in the undefinable.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he need for remodelling the fundamental mechanical principles as we find them stated in elementary text-books of physics and dynamics remains as urgent as ever. Professor A. E. H. Love is, indeed, to be congratulated in having in his Theoretical Mechanics ventured a good way in the right direction, but his work will hardly be used for elementary science teaching, and it is through the latter only that we can hope to give the new and sounder scientific conceptions general currency.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For the present the Grammar may yet be of service. After an eight years' life and... 4000 copies, it reappears in a revised and enlarged form.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[P]rogress... enables me to define several... conceptions much more accurately than was possible in 1892, and to indicate, if only in vague outline, what a fascinating field is being here transferred from the synoptic to the precise division of science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are periods in the growth of science when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to carefully examine its foundations. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts of modern science...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The obscurity which envelops the principia of science is not only due to an historical evolution influenced by the authority which attaches even to the phraseology used by great discoverers, but to the fact that science, as long as it had to carry on a difficult warfare with metaphysics and dogma, like a skilful general conceived it best to hide its own deficient organisation.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source