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Ernst Mach

the ideał of the ascetic which is not biologically tenablc for whocvcr practices it, and vanishes at oncc with his disappcarancc and from the ideał of an ovcrweening Nietzschean ‘superman’, who cannot and I hopc will not be tolcratcd by his fcllow men.”³⁰

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Ernst Mach*s philosophicał ideas penetrated the English-spcaking world vcry quickly and well bcforc his books were translated into English. A few English and American thinkers who coułd rcad German and a surprising number of German immigrants to America hclpcd givc Mach a second philosophicał home. Indced, in the long run his basie ideas at least with rcspect to philosophy of science were to find a morę widespread and congenial reception in America than anywhere in Europę.

William Kingdon Clitford (1845-1879) was a prccocious and bril-liant mathematician"whollicd before lic could finish his most impor-tant and influential book The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (London, 1885). He vcneratcd Berkeley and Hume and considcrcd “mind” the only reality. Anthony Quinton has elaimed that Mach’s theory of economy was cvidcnt in ClifTord’s Lcctures and Essays (1879).³¹ Mach also noted this, but suggested that Clifford may havc developcd the idea indepcndently.³"

Karl Pearson (1857-1936) was born in London, studied at King’$ CoilegeT^Berlin, and Heidelberg, was called to die bar in 1881 (but did not practice), and in 1884 took over Olaus HcnricPs chair in ap-plicd mathematics and mechanics at Univcrsity College in London which hc held undl 1911. Pearson seems to have bccn strongly in-fluenced by Clifford’s ideas and took it upon himsclf to finish his last book. Pearson related to Mach how he first became accjuaintcd with Mach’s ideas: “If William Kingdon ClifTord’s Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (International Scientific Scrics) is in your univcrsity library you might possibly carc to rcad the chaptcrs on Position and Motion which I wrote for that work in 1883, when the pcrusal of your Mechanik had bccn a great support to mc. You will find a rcference to the matter in the preface.” °³

Pearson was cspccially impressed by Machs phenomenalistic ap-proach to mass and force and his attempt to reduce dynamics to kinc-matics. Making cxtcnsive usc of Mach’s 1886 Contributions to the

Analysis of Sensations Pearson published in 1892 his Grammar of Science, a popular classic in the philosophy of science which has con-tinucd to be widely rcad in lingland and America to the present.

Pearson’s phenomenalism was enthusiastic and guileless to the point j of opcnly admituiig~its idcalistic foundations and bcing almost cn-tircly oblivious of philosophicał diflkultics. Mach’s caution and undcr-| Statement were absent, but otherwise Pearson might be called the complcte Machian. Almost as soon as Pearson finished the book his interests permancntly shifted away from philosophy to “Biometrics” and “Eugcnics.”

The rest of Pearson’* life w^fas almost cntircly spent in trying to introducc statistical methods and Francis Galton’s ideas on heredity into modern genctics and biology. Pearson was ccrtainly right on the importance of mathematics and statistics in biology, and he must be given credit for his long fight to persuade biologists of their importance, but for a short period between 1900 and 1910 he, Galton, and Wcldon, the leaders of the "Biometrie” movemcnt, scem to have stood in the way of the acceptancc of a most important theory in geneties and biology.

Just as Mach opposcd the atomie theory, so Pearson fought Men- | dclism. Both men tended to frown on all ‘‘theories ’ ~as merc “provi- \ sional aids" and ‘'uncconomical" vis-&-vis “functional relations.” In ' light of the philosophicał ideas he had picked up from Clifiord and Mach, Pearson for a long time was simply unablc to givc Mendelian theory its due. Galton’s statistical rcsults, generalized to apply to spe-cific cascs, sccmed much morę sucutific to him.

L. C. Dunn in his A Short History of Geneties (New York, 1965), has givcn the following ąccount of the controversy:

Biometry foundcd by Galton in the i88o’s, w^fas vigorously devclopcd during this period by Pearson. But the failurc of both men to apprcuaic the esscntial fcaturcs of Mendelian heredity led their school into opposition to Mendelism and hindered rather than hclpcd the testing and e.\tcnsion of Mcndcl’s principlcs.³¹

The fact was that a mcchanism of particulate heredity hascd on genes could not be dcduccd from corrclations between rclatives, whereas the cor-rclations between relatives found by biomctricians were necessary consc-ijucnccs of Mendelian heredity.⁸⁵

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