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Karl Pearson and the Logic of Science: Renouncing Causal Understanding (the Bride) and Inverted Spinozism

Stern, Julio Michael (2018) Karl Pearson and the Logic of Science: Renouncing Causal Understanding (the Bride) and Inverted Spinozism. South American Journal of Logic, 4 (1). pp. 219-252. ISSN 2446-6719

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Abstract

Karl Pearson is the leading figure of XX century statistics. He and his co-workers crafted the core of the theory, methods and language of frequentist or classical statistics – the prevalent inductive logic of contemporary science. However, before working in statistics, K. Pearson had other interests in life, namely, in this order, philosophy, physics, and biological heredity. Key concepts of his philosophical and epistemological system of anti-Spinozism (a form of transcendental idealism) are carried over to his subsequent works on the logic of scientific discovery.
This article's main goal is to analyze K. Pearson early philosophical and theological ideas and to investigate how the same ideas came to influence contemporary science, either directly or indirectly – by the use of variant theories, methods and dialects of statistics, corresponding to variant statistical inference procedures and their specific belief calculi.


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Item Type: Published Article or Volume
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Stern, Julio Michaeljstern@ime.usp.br0000-0003-2720-3871
Keywords: Causality and natural laws, Inductive logic and probabilistic inference, Phenomenology, Logical Positivism, Karl Pearson, Baruch Spinoza.
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
General Issues > Evidence
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Science and Religion
Depositing User: Prof. Julio Michael Stern
Date Deposited: 28 Mar 2023 17:15
Last Modified: 28 Mar 2023 17:15
Item ID: 21927
Journal or Publication Title: South American Journal of Logic
Subjects: General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics
General Issues > Confirmation/Induction
General Issues > Evidence
General Issues > Explanation
General Issues > Laws of Nature
Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
General Issues > Science and Religion
Date: 2018
Page Range: pp. 219-252
Volume: 4
Number: 1
ISSN: 2446-6719
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/21927

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