The obscurity which envelops the principia of science is not only due to an historical evolution influenced by the authority which attaches even to t… - Karl Pearson

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.

Preface, pp. xii-xiii. Here Pearson refers to Clausius' Ueber die Verdäderungen welche in den bisher gebräuchlichen Formeln für das Gleichgewicht und die Bewegung elastischer fester Körper durch neuere Beobachtungen nothwendig geworden sind, in Poggendorf's Annalen (1849) Vol. 76, pp. 46-67; and to Weber's Königliche Gesellschafl der Wissenschaflen (1835).

The absence of the improbable, the redundancy of the probable, is just as much conclusive evidence against conformity with scientific law as the too frequent occurrence of the improbable itself.