Karl Pearson - Collected Quotes

"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 Grammar of Science", 1892)

"Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we had failed before to observe, and makes new demands on our powers of interpretation." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"The unity of all science consists alone in its method, not in its material." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"Science for the past is a description, for the future a belief." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"The business of the scientist is to know, and therefore he will not lightly assent to throwing anything into the unknowable." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"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", 1892)

"The field of science is unlimited; its material is endless, every group of natural phenomena, every phase of social life, every stage of past or present development is material for science." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"The laws of science are products of the human mind rather than' factors of the external world. Science endeavors to provide a mental resume of the universe, and its last great claim to our support is the capacity it has for satisfying our cravings for a brief description of the history of the world." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"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, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"The smallest group of facts, if properly classified and logically dealt with, will form a stone which has its proper place in the great building of knowledge, wholly independent of the individual workman who has shaped it." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"The true aim of the teacher must be to impart an appreciation of method and not a knowledge of facts." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"There are periods in the growth of science when it is well to turn our attention from its imposing superstructure and to carefully examine its foundations." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"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, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"We must remember that because a proposition has not yet been proved, we have no right to infer that its converse must be true." (Karl Pearson, "The Grammar of Science", 1892)

"It is not theory, but actual statistical experience, which forces us to the conclusion that, however little we know of what will happen in the individual instance, yet the frequency of a large number of instances is distributed round the mode in a manner more and more smooth and uniform the greater the number of individual instances. When this distribution round the mode does not take place [...] then we assert that some cause other than chance is at work." (Karl Pearson "The Chances of Death", 1895)