Karl Pearson Quotes (65 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Grammar of Science

Karl Pearson

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Famous Karl Pearson Quotes

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[T]he laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory. Pearson refers the reader to William Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1815) "General View of Poetry".
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant."”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Karl Pearson Quotes about science

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Karl Pearson Quotes about knowledge

“[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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introduction
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Karl Pearson: Trending quotes

“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

The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton (1914)

Question

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Imagination , Memory , Law , Nature

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Sense , Imagination , Making love

Karl Pearson Quotes

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Self-confidence , Science , Thinking

“The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Sense , Science , Art

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Sense , Dependency , Universe

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Making love , Law

“Scarcely any specialist of to-day is really master of all the work which has been done in his own comparatively small field. Facts and their classification have been accumulating at such a rate that nobody seems to have leisure to recognise the relations of sub-groups to the whole. It is as if individual workers... were bringing their stones to one great building and piling them on and cementing them... without regard to any general plan... only where some one has placed a great corner stone... the building... rises... more rapidly... till it... is stopped for want of side support. Yet this great structure... possesses a symmetry and unity... in scientific method. The smallest group of facts, if properly classified and logically dealt with, ...has its proper place... wholly independent of the individual workman who... shaped it. Even when two men work unwittingly at the same stone they will but modify and correct each other... In the face of all this enormous progress... when in all civilised lands men are applying the scientific method... the goal of science is and must be infinitely distant.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Support , Distant , Relation ships , Science

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Past , Science , Life , Nature

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Reading , Intelligence , Books , Training

“If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Bad luck , Imagination

“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 natural theology and spiritualism.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Nature

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the First Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Books

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Question , War , Knowledge , Science

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Chance , Change , Nature

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Future , Knowledge , Idea , Science

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

World , Science , Appearance , Change

“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 book The Grammar of Science

Preface to the Second Edition
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Science , Men

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Idea , Chance , Law

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Chance

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Life , Death , Dance

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Death , Understanding

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

Chance , Box , Relation ships

“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

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

Science , Chance , Law

“No statements of mere averages... are of the least avail against our statistics. Fluctuations from the averages are the sole reliable test...”

Karl Pearson

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

“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

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

Law

“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

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

“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

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

Light , Appearance , Nature

“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 roulette.”

Karl Pearson

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

Sense , Game , Chance

“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

"The Scientific Aspect of Monte Carlo Roulette" (1894)

“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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Knowledge , Problem

“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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Knowledge , Religion

“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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Imagination , Religion , Help , Knowledge

“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

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

Universe , Life , Relation ships

“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

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 Studies of Science, Vol. 8, No. 1, Theme Issue: Sociology of Mathematics (Feb.,1978), pp. 3-34.

Lie , Thinking , Mathematics , Relation ships

“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

"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.

Mathematics , Parent

“[T]he universe is largely the construction of each individual mind.”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

Universe

“[T]he tribal conscience ought for the sake of social welfare to be stronger than private interest...”

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)