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… - Karl Pearson

If my view be correct, Erasmus Darwin planted the seed of suggestion in questioning whether adaptation meant no more to man than illustration of creative ingenuity; the one grandson, Charles Darwin, collected the facts which had to be dealt with and linked them together by wide-reaching hypotheses; the other grandson, Francis Galton, provided the methods by which they could be tested...

To say that there are certain fields—for example, metaphysics—from which science is excluded, wherein its methods have no application, is merely to say that the rules of methodical observation and the laws of logical thought do not apply to the facts, if any, which lie within such fields. These fields, if indeed such exist, must lie outside any intelligible definition which can be given of the word knowledge.

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 to carry on a difficult warfare with metaphysics and dogma, like a skilful general conceived it best to hide its own deficient organisation.