Karl Pearson: Quotes about space

Karl Pearson was English mathematician and biometrician. Explore interesting quotes on universe.

Karl Pearson: 130 quotes0 likes

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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.”

The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)

“[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)

“I simply assert that the universe alters, is "becoming;" what it is becoming I will not venture to say. ...the individual too is altering, is not only a "being" but also a "becoming."”

These alterations... I shall—merely for convenience—term life.
The Ethic of Freethought (Mar 6, 1883)