Karl Pearson

If any... work gives a description of phenomena that appeals to... imagination rather than to... reason, then it is bad science.

method. ...to marshal facts... examine their complex mutual relations and predict... their inevitable sequences... which we term natural laws

Minds trained to scientific methods are less likely to be led by mere appeal to the passions or by blind emotional excitement

[T]he state may be reasonably called upon to place instruction in pure science within the reach of all its citizens. ...The scientific habit of mind is one which may be acquired by all, and the readiest means of attaining to it ought to be …

characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind.

The scientific man has above all things to strive at self-elimination in his judgments

[T]he tribal conscience ought for the sake of social welfare to be stronger than private interest...

The views expressed in this Grammar on the fundamental concepts of science, especially on those of force and matter, have formed part of the author's teaching since he was first called upon (1882) to think how the elements of dynamical …

[T]his work... is... intended to arouse and stimulate the reader's own thought, rather than to inculcate doctrine: this result is often best achieved by the assertion and contradiction which excite the reader to independent inquiry.

One result of this obscurity we probably find in the ease with which the physicist, as compared with either the pure mathematician or the historian, is entangled in the meshes of such pseudosciences as and spiritualism.

these works possess little, if any, educational value; they neither encourage the growth of logical clearness nor form any exercise in scientific method.

Anything more hopelessly illogical than the statements with regard to force and matter current in elementary text-books of science, it is difficult to imagine

[T]his deficient organisation will not only in time be perceived by the enemy, but... has already had a very discouraging influence both on scientific recruits and on intelligent laymen.

The obscurity which envelops the principia of science is not only due to an historical evolution influenced by the authority which attaches even to the phraseology used by great discoverers, but to the fact that science, as long as it had …

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. The present book is primarily intended as a criticism of the fundamental concepts …

[P]rogress... enables me to define several... conceptions much more accurately than was possible in 1892, and to indicate, if only in vague outline, what a fascinating field is being here transferred from the synoptic to the precise …

For the present the Grammar may yet be of service. After an eight years' life and... 4000 copies, it reappears in a revised and enlarged form.

but his work will hardly be used for elementary science teaching, and it is through the latter only that we can hope to give the new and sounder scientific conceptions general currency.

Professor A. E. H. Love is

If the reader questions whether there is still war between science and dogma, I must reply that there always will be as long as knowledge is opposed to ignorance. To know requires exertion, and it is intellectually easiest to shirk effort …

That this change of view as to the basis of science cannot take place without misunderstanding, or without giving an opportunity to those who dislike science to decry its weaknesses, is only natural. To change the basis of operations …

Formerly men had belief as to the supersensuous and thought they had knowledge of the sensuous. The science of the future, while agnostic as to the supersensuous, will replace knowledge by belief in the perceptual sphere, and reserve the …

That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in the organic world, are statements which will appear platitudes to the next generation.

Step by step men of science are coming to recognise that mechanism is not at the bottom of phenomena, but is only the conceptual shorthand by aid of which they can briefly describe and resume phenomena.