Karl Pearson > Quotes

“Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.”
― Karl Pearson

“The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification—judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind—essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“Her statistics were more than a study... For her, Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique Sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed—and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief—that the administrator could only be successful if he were guided by statistical knowledge. The legislator—to say nothing of the politician—too often failed for want of this knowledge.”
― Karl Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton (Cambridge Library Collection - Darwin, Evolution and Genetics)

“The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“When every fact, every present or past phenomenon of that universe, every phase of present or past life therein, has been examined, classified, and co-ordinated with the rest, then the mission of science will be completed. What is this but saying that the task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases?”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“The starting point of Darwin's theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is the existence of differences among its members; and the first step in an enquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate of the frequency with which individuals, exhibiting any given degree of abnormality with respect to that, character, occur. The unit, with which such an enquiry must deal, is not an individual but a race, or a statistically representative sample of a race; and the result must take the form of a numerical statement, showing the relative frequency with which the various kinds of individuals composing the race occur.”
― Karl Pearson

“If I have put the case of science at all correctly, the reader will have recognised that modern science does much more than demand that it shall be left in undisturbed possession of what the theologian and metaphysician please to term its 'legitimate field'. It claims that the whole range of phenomena, mental as well as physical-the entire universe-is its field. It asserts that the scientific method is the sole gateway to the whole region of knowledge.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“Knowledge is the equipment which the trained mind can find for itself, but the training is a thing you have got to provide for it”
― Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science

“Do not expect to hear of any system or method on my part ; time seems too short and the world too vast for that! I rush from science to philosophy, and from philosophy to our old friends the poets; and then, over-wearied by too much idealism, I fancy I become practical in returning to science. Have you ever attempted to conceive all there is in the world worth knowing—that not one subject in the universe is unworthy of study? The giants of literature, the mysteries of many-dimensional space, the attempts of Boltzmann and Crookes to penetrate Nature's very laboratory, the Kantian theory of the universe, and the latest discoveries in embryology, with their wonderful tales of the development of life—what an immensity beyond our grasp!”
― Karl Pearson, The New Werther

“Science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind. […] In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“Medals are great encouragement to young men and lead them to feel their work is of value, I remember how keenly I felt this when in the 1890s. I received the Darwin Medal and the Huxley Medal. When one is old, one wants no encouragement and one goes on with one's work to the extent of one's power, because it has become habitual.”
― Karl Pearson

“There is nothing opposed in Biometry and Mendelism. Your husband and I worked that out at Peppards [on the Chilterns] and you will see it referred in the Biometrika memoir. The Mendelian formula leads up to the 'ancestral law'. What we fought against was the slovenliness in applying Mendel's categories and asserting that such formulae apply in cases when they did not.”
― Karl Pearson

“I will not underrate the importance [of equipment]... But I insist that the trained mind is the first thing, and for scouting a fool on horseback is worth less than a wise man on foot.”
― Karl Pearson, National Life from the Standpoint of Science

“The classification of facts and the formation of absolute judgments upon the basis of this classification-judgments independent of the idiosyncrasies of the individual mind-essentially sum up the aim and method of modern science. The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments, to provide an argument which is as true for each individual mind as for his own.”
― Karl Pearson

“There are many signs that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists.”
― Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

“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

“The right to live does not connote the right of each man to reproduce his kind ... As we lessen the stringency of natural selection, and more and more of the weaklings and the unfit survive, we must increase the standard, mental and physical, of parentage.”
― Karl Pearson