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Karl Pearson

110 quotes

“[T]his deficient organisation will not only in time be perceived by the enemy, but... has already had a very discouraging influence both on scientific recruits and on intelligent laymen.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anything more hopelessly illogical than the statements with regard to force and matter current in elementary text-books of science, it is difficult to imagine; and the author, as a result of some ten years' teaching and examining, has been forced to the conclusion that these works possess little, if any, educational value; they neither encourage the growth of logical clearness nor form any exercise in scientific method.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One result of this obscurity we probably find in the ease with which the physicist, as compared with either the pure mathematician or the historian, is entangled in the meshes of such pseudosciences as and spiritualism.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his work... is... intended to arouse and stimulate the reader's own thought, rather than to inculcate doctrine: this result is often best achieved by the assertion and contradiction which excite the reader to independent inquiry.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The views expressed in this Grammar on the fundamental concepts of science, especially on those of force and matter, have formed part of the author's teaching since he was first called upon (1882) to think how the elements of dynamical science could be presented free from metaphysics to young students. But the endeavour to put them into popular language only dates from... 1891...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he tribal conscience ought for the sake of social welfare to be stronger than private interest...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he state may be reasonably called upon to place instruction in pure science within the reach of all its citizens. ...The scientific habit of mind is one which may be acquired by all, and the readiest means of attaining to it ought to be placed within the reach of all.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Minds trained to scientific methods are less likely to be led by mere appeal to the passions or by blind emotional excitement to sanction acts which in the end may lead to social disaster. ...therefore, I lay stress upon the educational side of modern science and state my position..: Modern Science, as training the mind to an exact and impartial analysis of facts, is an education specially fitted to promote sound citizenship.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he value of science for practical life turns upon the efficient training it provides in method. ...to marshal facts... examine their complex mutual relations and predict... their inevitable sequences... which we term natural laws...[such a man ...will scarcely be content with merely superficial statement, with vague appeal to the imagination, to the emotions, to individual prejudices. He will demand a high standard of reasoning, a clear insight into facts and their results ...beneficial to the community at large.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The scientific method is one and the same in all branches, and that method is the method of all logically trained minds. In this respect the great classics of science are often the most intelligible of books, and... are far better worth reading than popularisations of them...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The field of science is unlimited; its material is endless, every group of natural phenomena, every phase of social life, every stage of past or present development is material for science. The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When... a simple principle has been discovered... then this principle or law itself generally leads to the discovery of a still wider range of hitherto unregarded phenomena... Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we had failed before to observe, and makes new demands...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he material of science is coextensive with the whole life, physical and mental, of the universe, and... the limits to our perception of the universe are only apparent, not real.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The universe is a variable quantity, which depends upon the keenness and structure of our organs of sense, and upon the fineness of our powers and instruments of observation.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]he universe is largely the construction of each individual mind.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To say that there are certain fields—for example, metaphysics—from which science is excluded, wherein its methods have no application, is merely to say that the rules of methodical observation and the laws of logical thought do not apply to the facts, if any, which lie within such fields. These fields, if indeed such exist, must lie outside any intelligible definition which can be given of the word knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each metaphysician has his own system, which to a large extent excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence... metaphysics are built either on air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation in facts at all, or the superstructure has been raised before a basis has been found in the accurate classification facts.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever there is the slightest possibility for the human mind to know, there is a legitimate problem of science. Outside the field of actual knowledge can only lie a region of the vaguest opinion and imagination, to which... men too often... pay higher respect than to knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Who can give us the assurance that the fields already occupied by science are alone those in which knowledge is possible? Who, in the words of Galilei, is willing to set limits to the human intellect?”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Professor Huxley has invented the term Agnostic... for those who limit the possibility of knowledge in certain fields. ...Professor E. du Bois-Reymond has raised the cry "Ignorabimus" ("We shall be ignorant") and... undertaken the difficult task of demonstrating that with regard to certain problems human knowledge is impossible. ...Now ...there is great danger in this cry. ...[T]he attempt to demonstrate an endless futurity of ignorance ...approaches despair. ...Evolution has taught us of the continual growth of man's intellectual powers.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]ediaeval ...alchemy, astrology, witchcraft. ...Do we now know how the stars influence human lives or how witches turn milk blue? Not in the least. We have learnt to look upon the facts themselves as unreal, as vain imaginings of the untrained human mind; we have learnt that they could not be described scientifically because they involved notions which were in themselves contradictory and absurd. ...So soon as science entered the field of alchemy with a true classification and a true method, alchemy was converted into chemistry and became an important branch of human knowledge.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now it will, I think, be found that the fields of inquiry where science has not yet penetrated and where the scientist still confesses ignorance, are very like... alchemy astrology and witchcraft... Either they involve facts which are in themselves unreal—conceptions which are self-contradictory and absurd, and therefore incapable of analysis by the scientific or any other method,—or, on the other hand, our ignorance arises from an inadequate classification and a neglect of scientific method.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although science claims the whole universe as its field... it confesses that its ignorance is more widely extended than its knowledge. In this very confession... it finds a safeguard for future progress. Science cannot... allow theologian or metaphysician... to the foreshore of our present ignorance, and so hinder the development in due time...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The single statement, the brief formula, the few words of which replace in our minds a wide range of relationships between isolated phenomena, is what we term a scientific law. Such a law, relieving our memory from the burden of individual sequences, enables us, with the minimum of intellectual fatigue, to grasp a vast complexity of natural or social phenomena. The discovery of law is... the peculiar function of the creative imagination. But this imagination has to be a disciplined one.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[W]hen the law is reached... it must be tested and criticised by its discoverer in every conceivable way, till he is certain that the imagination has not played him false, and that his law is in real agreement with the whole group of phenomena...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hundreds of men have allowed their imagination to solve the universe, but the men who have contributed to our real understanding of natural phenomena have been those who were unstinting in their application of criticism to the product of their imaginations. It is such criticism which is the essence of the scientific use of the imagination, which is... the very life-blood of science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Does not the beauty of the artist's work lie for us in the accuracy with which his symbols resume innumerable facts of our past emotional experience? ... [A]esthetic judgment... how exactly parallel it is to the scientific judgment.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introductory. Pearson refers the reader to William Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1815) "General View of Poetry".
“[T]he laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]t is better to be content with the fraction of a right solution than to beguile ourselves with the whole of a wrong solution.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Step by step [aesthetic] judgment, restless under the growth of positive knowledge, has discarded creed after creed and philosophic system after philosophic system.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[O]nly little by little, slowly... man, by the aid of organised observation and careful reasoning, can hope to reach knowledge of the truth... science... is the sole gateway to a knowledge which can harmonise with our past as well as with our... future... As Clifford puts it, "Scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was only the feeling that, at least in one or two aspects of Francis Galton's later life and of his scientific work, I could perhaps put his contributions to human knowledge more adequately than possibly one or another who might take up the task, if I resigned it, and who would hardly grasp the bearing of that long and intimate scientific correspondence between Galton, Weldon and myself, that I persevered in my endeavour to give some account of a life, wherein an important chapter of personal development must remain largely unrecorded.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]t was soon clear to me that I was collecting as much information bearing on the family history of Charles Darwin as on that of Francis Galton. It seemed desirable to place the two men to some extent in contrast in my volume, showing in ancestry, in methods of work and in outlook on life what they had in common and how they differed.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If my view be correct, Erasmus Darwin planted the seed of suggestion in questioning whether adaptation meant no more to man than illustration of creative ingenuity; the one grandson, Charles Darwin, collected the facts which had to be dealt with and linked them together by wide-reaching hypotheses; the other grandson, Francis Galton, provided the methods by which they could be tested...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who know the real history of the one occasion on which Galton and Darwin disagreed know how loyal Galton was to Darwin—loyal with a loyalty far rarer to-day. Galton would not have wished me to put him in the same rank as his master, but the reader who follows my story to the end may possibly see that the ramifications of Galton's methods are producing a renascence in innumerable branches of science...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his work... is intended fundamentally as a permanent memorial to the Founder of the , and embraces material which may easily perish or be ultimately lost sight of. ...My object is... to issue a volume to some extent worthy of the name of the man it bears,—which may be studied hereafter by those who wish to understand him, his origin and his aims...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[T]his work is not written to gain a public, but piam memoriam prodere conditoris nostri and is intended especially for those who have known and loved Francis Galton in the past, or who may in the future desire to understand and honour him.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of the mathematical theory of statistics is to deal with the relationship between 2 or more variable quantities without assuming that one is a single-valued mathematical function of the rest. The statistician does not think a certain x will produce a single-valued y; not a causative relation but a correlation. The relationship between x and y will be somewhere within a zone and we have to work out the probability that the point (x,y) will lie in different parts of that zone. The physicist is limited and shrinks the zone into a line. Our treatment will fit all the vagueness of biology, sociology, etc. A very wide science.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by E.S. Pearson, Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his Life and Work (1938) and cited in Bernard J. Norton, "Karl Pearson and Statistics: The Social Origins of Scientific Innovation" in Social S…
“The original work as planned by Clifford was to have been entitled The First Principles of the Mathematical Sciences Explained to the Non-Mathematical and to have contained six chapters on Number, Space, Quantity, Position, Motion, and Mass respectively. ...Shortly before his death he expressed a wish that the book should only be published after very careful revision and that its title should be changed to [our title]. Upon Clifford's death the labour of revision and completion was entrusted to Mr. R. C. Rowe... On the sad death of Professor Rowe... I was requested... to take up the... editing thus left incomplete. ...For the latter half of Chapter III and for the whole of Chapter IV... I am alone responsible. Yet whatever there is in them of value I owe to Clifford; whatever is feeble or obscure is my own. ...With Chapter V. my task has been by no means light. ... I felt it impossible to rewrite the whole without depriving the work of its right to be called Clifford's, and yet at the same time it was absolutely necessary to make considerable changes. ...Without any notice of mass or force it seemed impossible to close a discussion on motion; something I felt must be added. I have accordingly introduced a few pages on the laws of motion [and] since found that Clifford intended to write a concluding chapter on mass. How to express the laws of motion in a form of which Clifford would have approved was indeed an insoluble riddle... because I was unaware of his having written on the subject. I have accordingly expressed... my own views on the subject [i.e.,] a strong desire to see the terms matter and force, together with the ideas associated with them, entirely removed from scientific terminology—to reduce, in fact, all dynamic to kinematic. I should hardly have ventured to put forward these views had I not recently discovered that they have... the weighty authority of Professor Mach... But since writing these pages I have also been referred to a discourse delivered by Clifford at the Royal Institution in 1873, some... of which appeared in Nature June 10, 1880 [pp. 122-123.] Therein it is stated that 'no mathematician can give any meaning to the language about matter, force, inertia used in current text-books of mechanics.' This fragmentary account of the discourse undoubtedly proves that Clifford held on the categories of matter and force as clear and original ideas as on all subjects of which he has treated; only, alas! they have not been preserved. Footnote: Mr. R. Tucker who... searched Clifford's note books... sends me... the following... in Clifford's handwriting: 'Force is not a fact at all, but an idea embodying what is approximately the fact.'”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I fear that... I may appear to have exceeded the duty of an editor. For all the Articles in this volume whose numbers are enclosed in square brackets I am alone responsible, as well as for the corresponding footnotes, and the Appendix... The principle which has guided me throughout the additions I have made has been to make the work... a standard work of reference for its own branch of science. ...It forms ...the history of a peculiar phase of intellectual development, worth studying for the many side lights it throws on general human progress. On the other hand it serves as a guide to the investigator in what has been done, and what ought to be done. ...[T]he individualism of modern science has not infrequently led to a great waste of power; the same... work has been repeated in different countries at different times, owing to the absence of such histories... [T]he would-be researcher either wastes much of his time in learning the history... or else works away regardless of earlier investigators. ...I have endeavoured to give it completeness (1) as a history of developement, (2) as a guide to what has been accomplished.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The whole early history... is... so intimately connected with the names Galilei, Hooke, Mariotte and Leibniz that I have introduced some account of their work. The labours of Lagrange and Riccati also required some recognition. ...These early writers form the basis... not without interest, whether judged from the special standpoint of the elastician or from the wider footing of... the growth of human ideas. With a similar aim I have introduced throughout the volume... memoirs having purely historical value which had escaped Dr Hunter's notice. Another class of memoirs which I have inserted are... of mathematical value, omitted apparently by pure accident. For example all the memoirs of F. E. Neumann, the second memoir of Duhamel, those of [P. H.] Blanchet etc. I cannot hope that the work is complete in this respect even now, but I trust that nothing of equal importance has escaped...”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My greatest difficulty arose with regard to the rigid line which Dr Todhunter had attempted to draw between mathematical and physical memoirs. Thus while including an account of Clausius' memoir of 1849, he had omitted Weber's of 1835, yet the consideration of the former demands the inclusion of the latter... [with respect to] elastic after-strain. What seemed... needful at... present... was to place before the mathematician the results of physical investigations that he might have some distinct guide to the direction in which research is required. ...I have endeavoured... to abrogate this divorce between mathematical elasticity on the one hand, and physical and technical elasticity on the other. With this aim... I have introduced the general conclusions of a considerable body of physical and technical memoirs in the hope that... I may bring the mathematician closer to the physicist and both to the practical engineer. I trust that in doing so I have rendered this History of value... and so increased the usefulness of Dr Todhunter's... years of patient historical research on the more purely mathematical side of elasticity. In this matter I have kept before me the labours of M. de Saint Venant as a true guide to the functions of the ideal elastician.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface, pp. xii-xiii. Here Pearson refers to Clausius' Ueber die Verdäderungen welche in den bisher gebräuchlichen Formeln für das Gleichgewicht und die Bewegung elastischer fester Körper durch neuere Beobachtungen not…
“The next point to which I turned my attention was the frequency with which the several numbers themselves occurred. ...Each number might be expected to have occurred either 447 or 448 times. ... I found that they fitted to a standard deviation of 15.85 while the theoretical standard was 20.87 giving a difference of 5. ...What is a reasonable amount for the standard deviation of an experiment of this kind to differ from its theoretical value..? The mathematician answers... by finding the standard deviation of the standard deviation. It turned out... to be 2.43... the odds against a divergence as large or larger than 5...were ...21 to 1. In every two years I might expect such a deviation from the most probable results to occur once. ...I ...increased ...by counting the numbers for each week in the month instead of the total month. Here the experimental standard deviation [was] 7.2, the theoretical being 10.34, a difference of 3.14, while the standard deviation between experiment and theory was only 0.60. The odds against a divergence so great as this are... about 2,000,000 to 1.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source