A01=Theodore M. Porter
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Author_Theodore M. Porter
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Cultural history
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Eugenics
Explanation
Francis Galton
Freethought
Geometry
German literature
God
Hypothesis
Individualism
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
John Ruskin
John Stuart Mill
Karl Pearson
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Mathematics
Measurement
Modernity
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Natural science
Natural theology
Oliver Lodge
Oscar Browning
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The Grammar of Science
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Thomas Henry Huxley
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William Kingdon Clifford
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Product details
- ISBN 9780691126357
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 08 Jan 2006
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Karl Pearson, founder of modern statistics, came to this field by way of passionate early studies of philosophy and cultural history as well as ether physics and graphical geometry. His faith in science grew out of a deeply moral quest, reflected also in his socialism and his efforts to find a new basis for relations between men and women. This biography recounts Pearson's extraordinary intellectual adventure and sheds new light on the inner life of science. Theodore Porter's intensely personal portrait of Pearson extends from religious crisis and sexual tensions to metaphysical and even mathematical anxieties. Pearson sought to reconcile reason with enthusiasm and to achieve the impersonal perspective of science without sacrificing complex individuality. Even as he longed to experience nature directly and intimately, he identified science with renunciation and positivistic detachment. Porter finds a turning point in Pearson's career, where his humanistic interests gave way to statistical ones, in his Grammar of Science (1892), in which he attempted to establish scientific method as the moral educational basis for a refashioned culture.
In this original and engaging book, a leading historian of modern science investigates the interior experience of one man's scientific life while placing it in a rich tapestry of social, political, and intellectual movements.
Theodore Porter is Professor of History at UCLA and author of "The Rise of Statistical Thinking" and "Trust in Numbers" (both Princeton)
