Primitive man... rushes to the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself infinite; that he, man, is not altogether finite, and so he con… - Karl Pearson

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Primitive man... rushes to the satisfactory conclusion that that power must be itself infinite; that he, man, is not altogether finite, and so he constructs a doctrine of the soul and its immortality. Then he builds up myths, superstitions, primitive religions, dogmas, whereby the infinite is made subject to the finite—floating on this huge bladder of man's supposed immortality. The universe is given a purpose, and that purpose is man—the whole is made subordinate to the part. That is the first solution of the problem, the keystone of most concrete religions.

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About Karl Pearson

Karl Pearson (27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an influential English mathematician and biostatistician. He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911.

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Alternative Names: Carl Pearson
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Additional quotes by Karl Pearson

Although science claims the whole universe as its field... it confesses that its ignorance is more widely extended than its knowledge. In this very confession... it finds a safeguard for future progress. Science cannot... allow theologian or metaphysician... to the foreshore of our present ignorance, and so hinder the development in due time...

This idea of Death as the lawless one... who strikes at random, arose early in mediaeval tradition, and is represented in the well known Dances of Death... Parallel with this notion... has run in the mind of the folk a vague idea of Chance as that which obeys no rule and defies all measure and prediction. The two conceptions cross one another in the medieval representation of Death seizing the gambler's dice-box and casting the dice with him for his life.

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