K. Pearson to F. Galton, 12th Feb. 1897.- External URL
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Sent From (Definite): Karl PearsonSent To (Definite): Sir Francis GaltonDate: 12 Feb 1897
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Holder (Definite): University College London: Special Collections
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Sent fromKarl Pearson
12 Feb 1897
Description:
‘Dear Mr Galton,
I wanted to write you a few words as to yesterday’s meeting [at the R.S.]...
All the problems laid down by you in your printed paper seem to me capable of solution, and nearly all of them in one way only, by statistical methods and calculations of a more or less delicate mathematical kind. The older school of biologists cannot be expected to follow these methods – e.g. Ray Lankester, Thistleton-Dyer, etc. A younger generation is only just beginning its training in them.
I believe that your problems could be answered by direct & well devised experiments at a ‘farm’ or institute under the supervision of some two or three men who appreciate the new methods. I think you were entirely right in the idea of a committee to carry out such a [sic] experiments. But I venture to think that the Committee you have got together is entirely unsuited to direct such experiments. It is far too large, far too much of the old biological type & far too unconscious of the fact that the answers to the problems required are in the first place statistics & in the next place statistics & only in the third place biology. It was the idea of a committee so constituted endeavouring to make experiments that had me support Professor M. Foster’s motion, that the Committee should not experiment but assist experiment, and also object to his words “under the committee”. Fancy the attempt to make real experiments on correlation or heredity coefficients “under a committee” of whom I shrewdly suspect, only the chairman [Galton?] & secretary [Weldon?] know the significance of the terms!
Hence, to sum up, your method seems to me the right one – a committee to undertake experiments of a definite statistical character. But your committee is quite a wrong one. It would be a good committee to press the public with subscription lists, but it is, I believe, a hopeless one to devise experiments which will solve in the only effective way these experiments [i.e. questions].
Yours always sincerely,
Karl Pearson.’
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Sent toSir Francis Galton
12 Feb 1897
Description:
‘Dear Mr Galton,
I wanted to write you a few words as to yesterday’s meeting [at the R.S.]...
All the problems laid down by you in your printed paper seem to me capable of solution, and nearly all of them in one way only, by statistical methods and calculations of a more or less delicate mathematical kind. The older school of biologists cannot be expected to follow these methods – e.g. Ray Lankester, Thistleton-Dyer, etc. A younger generation is only just beginning its training in them.
I believe that your problems could be answered by direct & well devised experiments at a ‘farm’ or institute under the supervision of some two or three men who appreciate the new methods. I think you were entirely right in the idea of a committee to carry out such a [sic] experiments. But I venture to think that the Committee you have got together is entirely unsuited to direct such experiments. It is far too large, far too much of the old biological type & far too unconscious of the fact that the answers to the problems required are in the first place statistics & in the next place statistics & only in the third place biology. It was the idea of a committee so constituted endeavouring to make experiments that had me support Professor M. Foster’s motion, that the Committee should not experiment but assist experiment, and also object to his words “under the committee”. Fancy the attempt to make real experiments on correlation or heredity coefficients “under a committee” of whom I shrewdly suspect, only the chairman [Galton?] & secretary [Weldon?] know the significance of the terms!
Hence, to sum up, your method seems to me the right one – a committee to undertake experiments of a definite statistical character. But your committee is quite a wrong one. It would be a good committee to press the public with subscription lists, but it is, I believe, a hopeless one to devise experiments which will solve in the only effective way these experiments [i.e. questions].
Yours always sincerely,
Karl Pearson.’
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