Karl Pearson famous quotes

04-17-2025

Statistics is the grammar of science.
-- Karl Pearson

#Statistics #Grammar
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

#Greatness #Men #Artist
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

#Encouragement #Hard Work #Goes On
The mathematician, carried along on his flood of symbols, dealing apparently with purely formal truths, may still reach results of endless importance for our description of the physical universe.
-- Karl Pearson

#May #Results #Description
It is the old experience that a rude instrument in the hand of a master craftsman will achieve more than the finest tool wielded by the uninspired journeyman.
-- Karl Pearson

#Hands #Achievement #Rude
That which is measured improves. That which is measured and reported improves exponentially.
-- Karl Pearson
I look upon statistics as the handmaid of medicine, but on that very account I hold that it befits medicine to treat her handmaid with proper respect, and not to prostitute her services for controversial or personal purposes.
-- Karl Pearson

#Husband #Science #Medicine
The scientific method of examining facts is not peculiar to one class of phenomena and to one class of workers; it is applicable to social as well as to physical problems, and we must carefully guard ourselves against supposing that the scientific frame of mind is a peculiarity of the professional scientist.
-- Karl Pearson

#Class #Mind #Scientific Method
The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material.
-- Karl Pearson

#Science #Unity #Method
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

#Independent #Science #Men
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 unbiassed by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.
-- Karl Pearson

#Science #Feelings #Mind
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

#Men #Past #Phases
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

#Demand #Scientific Method #Fields
"Endow scientific research and we shall know the truth, when and where it is possible to ascertain it;" but the counterblast is at hand: "To endow research is merely to encourage the research for endowment; the true man of science will not be held back by poverty, and if science is of use to us, it will pay for itself." Such are but a few samples of the conflict of opinion which we find raging around us.
-- Karl Pearson

#Men #Hands #Pay
Order and reason, beauty and benevolence, are characteristics and conceptions which we find solely associated with the mind of man.
-- Karl Pearson

#Emotional #Men #Order
There is no shortcut to truth, no way to gain knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of the scientific method.
-- Karl Pearson

#Scientific Method #Way #Gains

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