That all science is description and not explanation, that the mystery of change in the inorganic world is just as great and just as omnipresent as in… - Karl Pearson

[O]ur conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. Where we cannot predict, where we do not find order and regularity, there we should now assert... that something else than Chance is at work. What we are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law, and one the nature of which can... be closely predicted.

Science can only answer to the great majority of "metaphysical" problems "I am ignorant." Meanwhile, it is idle to be impatient or to indulge in system-making.

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...