Karl Pearson: Quotes about knowledge

“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)

Time , Future , Knowledge , Universe

“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)

Knowledge , Science

“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)

Imagination , Knowledge , Problem , Lie

“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)

Knowledge , Truth , Way , Universe

“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)

Law , Intelligence , Knowledge , Lie

“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

“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

“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

“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)

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)

Knowledge , Religion , Evil , Relation ships

“[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)

Knowledge , Science , Relation ships , Nature