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Karl Pearson: 130 quotes0 likes

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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.”

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“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.”

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“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.”

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“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.”

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“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.”

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“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.”

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

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

"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.”

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

“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.”

"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.”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

"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.”

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)