Karl Pearson

Do we now know how the stars influence human lives or how witches turn milk blue? Not in the least. We have learnt to look upon the facts themselves as unreal, as vain imaginings of the untrained human mind

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?

The ignorance of science means the enforced ignorance of mankind.

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 …

It took nearly two hundred years to convince the whole theological world that cosmical problems were the legitimate problems of science and science alone, for in 1819 the books of Galilei, Copernicus, and Keppler were still upon the index …

Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.

lead, like the scientific, to practical unanimity of judgment

reaches its judgments by some obscure process of internal cogitation. It is therefore dangerously liable to the influence of individual bias; it results... in an endless number of competing and contradictory systems. It

[T]he philosophical method

Our aesthetic judgment demands harmony between the representation, and the represented and in this sense science is often more artistic than modern art.

There is no short cut to truth, no way to gain a knowledge of the universe except through the gateway of scientific method.

Each metaphysician has his own system, which to a large extent excludes that of his predecessors and colleagues. Hence... metaphysics are built either on air or on quicksands—either they start from no foundation in facts at all, or the …

must lie outside any intelligible definition which can be given of the word knowledge.

To say that there are certain fields—for example, metaphysics—from which science is excluded

[T]he universe is largely the construction of each individual mind.

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.

[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.

The universe grows ever larger as we learn to understand more of our own corner of it.

When... a simple principle has been discovered... then this principle or law itself generally leads to the discovery of a still wider range of hitherto unregarded phenomena... Every great advance of science opens our eyes to facts which we …

Yet this great structure... possesses a symmetry and unity... in scientific method.

Facts and their classification have been accumulating at such a rate that nobody seems to have leisure to recognise the relations of sub-groups to the whole.

[T]he task of science can never end till man ceases to be, till history is no longer made, and development itself ceases.

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. The unity of all science consists alone in its …

The scientific method is one and the same in all branches, and that method is the method of all logically trained minds. In this respect the great classics of science are often the most intelligible of books, and... are far better worth …