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The Grammar of Science THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
KARL
PEARSON
1911 LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES
BLACK
THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE
First Edition, February 1892 Second Edition, january 1900 Third Edition, Jl!arch 1911
The
Grammar
of Science BY
KARL
PEARSON,
HONORARY FI:LLOW OF
�I.SG
'
s
M.A.,
F.R.S.
COLLI:GE, CAMBRIDGI:
J'ROFI:SSOR OF APPLU:D MATHF.M... TICS ASD M!CHA.SICS, U.SIVERSITY COLLEG I:, LO.SDO:S
THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED
" La critique est Ia vic de Ia science." CousiN.
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES
BLACK
TO THE MEMORY OF
SIR THOMAS GRESH AM, KNIGHT WHILOM MERCHANT OF THE C I TY OF LONDON A MAN WHOSE NOBLE PURPOSE WAS TO CREATE A GREAT UNIVERSITY FOR LONDON, BUT WHOSE FATE WAS TO SELECT IGNOBLE INSTRUMENTS FOR THE CONTROL OF HIS SPLENDID BENEFACTION
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION THIS work has been out of print for some time, and I
have long meditated as to whether it was or was not
desirable to reissue it.
A nd, if it were desirable, the
problem of how it could possibly be done in a manner likely to satisfy the modern reader has raised m uch doubt in
my
m ind.
Reading the book again
after
many
years, it was surprising to find how the heterodoxy of the 'eighties had become the common place and accepted doctrine of to-day.
explains
Nobody believes now that science
anything; we all look upon it as
scription, as an economy of thought. in issuing Clifford's I
defined
a
shorthand de
Yet in 1 88 5, when
Common Sense of the Exact Sciences,
mass as
a
ratio of accelerations, and said
that the current definitions of matter and force were u n intelligible, it called forth the most strong protest from more than one distinguished physicist.
Grammar of ScieJZce
And, again , the
which first saw the light in 1 8gz
belonged to an age when the leader of British mathe matical physicists was confidently asserting that there was nothing he was more sure of than reality of the ether.
the
objective
It seems almost un necessary nm\·
to republish a book, the lesson of which is that objective force and matter have nothing whatever to do with science, and that atom and ether are merely intellectual concepts solely useful for the purpose of describing our perceptual routine.
\Vhy
!
the physicists themselves are nowadays
vi
THE
GRAM M A R
OF SCI ENCE
almost prepared for each individual observer carrying about his own ether, and are even more certain than the author of the Grammar that ether and atom must account for, but need not obey, the Newtonian mechanics ! What possible purpose, then, can this Grammar serve ? Were the author still young and not burdened with many other tasks, a very serviceable function could be performed by showing that the methods of the Grammar extend even further than was indicated in 1 8 9 2. Beyond such dis carded fundamentals as " matter " and " force " lies still another fetish amidst the inscrutable arcana of even modern science, namely, the category of cause and effect. Is this category anything but a conceptual limit to experience, and without any basis in perception beyond a statistical approximation ? The very idea will be scouted now, as Professor Tait scouted in I 8 8 5 the non reality of force, or Lord Kelvin later the non-reality of the ether. But the real question is, what will men of science be saying twenty years hence ? They may then r