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“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)

“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)

“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)

“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.

“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.

“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)

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

Karl Pearson book The Grammar of Science

Introductory
The Grammar of Science (1900)

“[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)

“[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)

“[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)

“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 book The Grammar of Science

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

“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

"The Chances of Death" (1895)

“[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

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