Some quotations from R.A.Fisher
Compiled
by A.W.F.Edwards
“Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an
exceedingly high degree of improbability”.
Reported by J.S.Huxley in Evolution in Action,
...it was Darwin’s chief contribution, not only to
Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process
by which contingencies a priori
improbable, are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until
it is their non-occurrence rather than their occurrence which becomes highly
improbable.
... Let the reader ...
attempt to calculate the prior probability that a hundred generations of his
ancestry in the direct male line should each have left at least one son. The
odds against such a contingency as it would have appeared to his hundredth
ancestor (about the time of King Solomon) would require for their expression
forty-four figures of the decimal notation; yet this improbable event has
certainly happened.
Retrospect of criticisms of
the theory of natural selection. In
Evolution as a Process, eds. J.S.Huxley, A.C.Hardy and E.B.Ford,
The million, million, million ... to one chance happens once in a million, million, million ... times no matter how surprised we may be that it results in us.
Quoted by K.Mather, Heredity
30, 89–91, 1973.
for the “one chance in a million” will undoubtedly
occur, with no less and no more than its appropriate frequency, however
surprised we may be that it should occur to us.
The Design of Experiments, p.13 (6th edition, 1951).
Natural selection is not evolution.
Opening sentence of The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection,
In truth, when I try to explain the Theory of
Natural Selection to students, the phrases I find least helpful are those
rather journalistic slogans “The Struggle for Existence” and “The Survival of
the Fittest”. Each, of course, has a defensible meaning, but it is, I fear,
only their dramatic violence that makes them effective.
Inaugural Address as
President of the Royal Statistical Society, 19 November 1952. J. Roy.
Statist. Soc. A 116, 1–6, 1953.
What [Hogben and Haldane] do not see is that we
ordinarily count as genetic only such part of the genetic effect as may be
included in a linear formula and that we make a present to the
environmentalists of such variation due to the combined action of genetic and
environmental causes as is not expressible in such a formula ... .
18 January 1935, in a letter to J.A. Fraser Roberts. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics,
p.260, ed. J.H.Bennett,
Due to all this I am completely puzzled by the
statement in your letter that the rate of evolutionary change may be equated to
the total variance rather than to the genetic component of variance as I had
done.
31 January 1955, in a letter to O.Kempthorne. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics,
p.228, J.H.Bennett,
… the only evolutionary effect, either in increased
fitness or in anything else, that I can recognize as such, is constituted by
changes in gene ratio.
18 February 1955, in a letter to O.Kempthorne. Printed in Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics,
p.229, J.H.Bennett,
I believe that no one who is familiar, either with
mathematical advances in other fields, or with the range of special biological
conditions to be considered, would ever conceive that everything could be
summed up in a single mathematical formula, however complex.
The evolutionary
modification of genetic phenomena. Proceedings
of the 6th International Congress of Genetics 1, 165-72, 1932.
...
the best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which
seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.
Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956, p.31.
Faith Is Not Credulity.
Subtitle to Science and
Christianity, Friend 113, 995–996, 1955.
(in full: ‘Christian children should … be taught
that faith does not mean credulity; but is a quality, very like courage, which
makes one hold fast to that which is good, … .)
Fairly large print is a real antidote to stiff
reading.
31 May 1929, in a letter to
K.Sisam, Oxford University Press. Printed in
Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, p.20, ed. J.H.Bennett,
After all, it is a common weakness of young authors
to put too much into their papers.
Contributions to Mathematical Statistics,
The academic mind, as we know, is sometimes capable
of assuming an aggressive attitude. The official mind, on the contrary, is and
has to be, expert in the art of self-defence.
Presidential Address to the
First Indian Statistical Congress, 1938. Sankhya
4, 14-17.
To consult the statistician after an experiment is
finished is often merely to ask him to conduct a post mortem examination. He can perhaps say what the experiment
died of.
Presidential Address to the
First Indian Statistical Congress, 1938. Sankhya
4, 14-17.
In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for
dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research
worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly
aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his
concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his
problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually
only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop,
rather than a warehouse.*
Eugenics, academic and practical. Eugenics Review, 27, 95-100, 1935.
*The original has ‘to store it as’ inserted before the final words ‘a warehouse’, but I assume this is a mistake left over from an earlier draft.
Apart from sex linkage, we know almost nothing at
present of linkage in man. Yet it is certain that every defect determined by a
single factor must be located in one or other of twenty-three [sic]
linkage groups. Each defect must therefore be linked in inheritance with
numerous other observable traits, and with some of them is probably linked
closely. The search for such linkage will certainly be lengthy, and at first,
disappointing.
Eugenics, academic and practical. Eugenics Review, 27, 95-100, 1935.
There is, then, in this analysis of variance no
indication of any other than innate and heritable factors at work.
(The coining of the phrase
‘analysis of variance’.) The causes of human variability. Eugenics Review 10,
213-220, 1918.
The analysis of variance is not a mathematical
theorem, but rather a convenient method
of arranging the arithmetic.
Discussion to ‘Statistics in
agricultural research’ by J.Wishart,
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Supplement, 1, 26-61, 1934.
However, perhaps the main point is that you are
under no obligation to analyse variance into its parts if it does not come
apart easily, and its unwillingness to do so naturally indicates that one’s
line of approach is not very fruitful.
25 February 1933, in a letter
to L.Hogben. Printed in Natural
Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics, J.H.Bennett,
… the so-called co-efficient of heritability, which
I regard as one of those unfortunate short-cuts, which have often emerged in
biometry for lack of a more thorough analysis of the data.
British Agricultural Bulletin 4,
217–218, 1951.
In relation to any experiment we may speak of this
hypothesis as the “null hypothesis,” and it should be noted that the null
hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the
course of experimentation. Every experiment may be said to exist only in order
to give the facts a chance of disproving the null hypothesis.
(The coining of the phrase.)
The Design of Experiments, Edinburgh:
Oliver and Boyd, 1935, p.18.
Critical tests of this kind may be called tests of
significance, and when such tests are available we may discover whether a
second sample is or is not significantly different from the first.
(The coining of the phrase
‘test of significance’.) Statistical
Methods for Research Workers, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1925, p.43.
More attention to the History of Science is needed,
as much by scientists as by historians, and especially by biologists, and this
should mean a deliberate attempt to understand the thoughts of the great
masters of the past, to see in what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where
they took the wrong turning or stopped short on the right track.
Natural selection from the
genetical standpoint. Australian Journal
of Science 22, 16-17, 1959.
The statistician cannot
excuse himself from the duty of getting his head clear on the principles of
scientific inference, but equally no other thinking man can avoid a like
obligation.
The Design of Experiments, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1935, p.2.
I may myself say that I
learned it [the theory of inverse probability] at school as an integral part of
the subject , and for some years saw no reason to question its validity.
Uncertain inference. Proceedings
of the
Dr Jeffreys says that I am
entitled to use maximum likelihood as a primitive postulate. In this I believe
he is right. A worker with more intuitive insight than I might perhaps have
recognized that likelihood must play in inductive reasoning a part analogous to
that of probability in deductive problems.
Comment on H, Jeffreys’
paper on maximum likelihood, inverse probability and the method of moments. Annals of Eugenics 8, 151, 1938.
We have the duty of
formulating, of summarizing, and of communicating our conclusions, in
intelligible form, in recognition of the right of other free minds to utilize them in making their own decisions.
Statistical
methods and scientific induction. Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society, B, 17,
69-78, 1955.
The Edwards who messed up
Cleghorn’s data, and is formally thanked for it in his letter to Nature
seems not to be my Edwards from
27 September
1960, in a letter to R.R.Race. Quoted (with the permission of Professor
J.H.Edwards) by A.W.F.Edwards (1998), The Eugenics Society and the Development
of Biometry. Essays in the History of Eugenics, ed. R.A.Peel;
“It looks like a book by
Hogben”.
1958, on
receiving his copies of the
“That’s one in the eye for
the General Board”.
1952, on
hearing that he was to be knighted. The General Board at
“Charming chap the Secretary General. One doesn’t
like to put his letters unopened into the wastepaper basket”.
ca. 1954. The Secretary General (at the time
H.M.Taylor) was the secretary of the General Board (see preceding quotation).
Reported by C.B.Goodhart.
“I am a well-known
statistician and a fairly well-known geneticist, but I have never been
consulted on any appointment to a University post in statistics or genetics
outside my own Department”.
1957. Quoted
by A.W.F.Edwards (1990), R.A.Fisher, Twice Professor of Genetics:
Hereditary Genius [by Francis Galton] stands to-day as one of the great books of the
nineteenth century. This is not due to its influence on popular thought, but to
its inherent qualities. It was first published in 1869, ten years after the Origin of Species, and only separated by
two years from the appearance of the first volume of Das Kapital by Karl Marx. The latter book is its natural antithesis.
Its central aim is the political control of wealth, whereas Galton had his eyes
fixed on biological well-being; it dogmatically asserts human equality, while
Galton is concerned to measure the important inequalities; it appeals to hatred
and vindictive destruction, while Galton, not irrationally for his period,
looks forward with confidence to the progressive improvement of existing
institutions; above all Das Kapital
appealed to passion, but Hereditary
Genius to an almost stoically detached reason. Ideological war had broken
out, right in
Review of the
reprint of the second edition of Hereditary
Genius. Eugenics Review 43, 37, 1951.
For the future, so far as we
can foresee it, it appears to be unquestionable that the activity of the human
race will provide the major factor in the environment of almost every evolving
organism. Whether they act consciously or unconsciously human initiative and
human choice have become the major channels of creative activity on this
planet. Inadequately prepared we unquestionably are for the new
responsibilities, which with the rapid extension of human control over the
productive resources of the world have been, as it were, suddenly thrust upon
us. Yet there have in recent times been some signs of a responsible attitude.
We have come to expect kindness in the treatment of the domestic animals. We
have come to deplore the irreplaceable loss of the species which ignorance and
greed have exterminated. The future of some wild animals has occasioned
sufficient anxiety for the provision of Parks and Nature Reserves to be the
normal policy of civilised peoples. These are signs that we do not feel that
ruthless exploitation is good enough. Our knowledge it is true is still in the
highest degree inadequate; yet a beginning has been made with ecological
studies, and what has been called population genetics, at least to explore the
methods by which more effective knowledge can be obtained.
Creative Aspects of Natural Law. Eddington Memorial
Lecture, 2 November 1950.
Fisher believes that human groups differ profoundly
“in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development” and
concludes from this that the “practical international problem is that of
learning to share the resources of this planet amicably with persons of
materially different nature, and that this problem is being obscured by
entirely well intentioned efforts to minimize the real differences that exist”.
The Race Concept, UNESCO, Paris, 1952, p.27.
When
a large number of individuals are measured in respect of physical dimensions,
weight, colour, density, etc., it is possible to describe with some accuracy
the population of which our experience may be regarded as a sample. By this
means it may be possible to distinguish it from other populations differing in
their genetic origin, or in environmental circumstances. Thus local races may
be very different as populations, although individuals may overlap in all
characters; ... .
R.A.Fisher (1925) Statistical Methods for Research Workers, Edinburgh:
Oliver and Boyd, 1925, p.37.
So melancholy a neglect of
The specialised research
worker is always ready to sneer at the man who prefers the labours of mental
abstraction. ...
An age of extreme and
unparalleled specialisation, such as that in which we live, needs above all the
steadying influence of a firm grasp on principles. Detail itself is arid and
tedious; it is moreover largely unintelligible in the absence of explanatory
principle. There is too much experiment and too little thought.
Cuénot on
preadaptation. A criticism. Eugenics
Review 7, 46-61, 1915 (with
C.S.Stock).
In his long attack on
Mendelism he [Pearson] encountered in William Bateson an opponent equally obstinate,
and undoubtedly his master in sarcasm. The controversy proved nothing, but that
Bateson did not know enough of mathematics, nor Pearson enough of biology.
1946. Draft of
entry on Karl Pearson for the Dictionary of National Biography, finally
published by A.W.F.Edwards (1994) R.A.Fisher on Karl Pearson. Notes and
Records of the Royal Society 48, 97-106.
My 1918 paper was refereed
by Pearson and Punnett, both of whom I later succeeded.
ca. 1956. Reported by
W.F.Bodmer. (See also Fisher’s letter to C.S.Stock, 18 September 1943, printed
in Natural Selection, Heredity, and
Eugenics, 264–5, J.H.Bennett, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.)
Any opinion put forward by Professor Pearson is worthy
of respect; but …
The goodness
of fit of regression formulæ, and the distribution of regression coefficients. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society
85, 597-612, 1922.
G.H.Hardy, the pure mathematician – to whom I owe all that I know of pure mathematics – ... .
The nature of
probability. Centennial Review 2, 261–274, 1958.
My revered teacher Prof. Whitehead of
Presidential Address to the
First Indian Statistical Congress, 1938. Sankhya
4, 14-17.
[Randomization
tests]
... it is then obvious at the time that the
judgement of significance has been decided not by the evidence of the sample,
but by the throw of the coin. It is not obvious how the research worker is to
be made to forget this circumstance; and it is certain that he ought not to
forget it, if he is concerned to assess the weight only of objective
observational facts against the hypothesis in question. A real experimenter, in
fact, so far from being willing to introduce an element of chance into the
formation of his scientific conclusions, has been steadily exerting himself, in
the planning of his experiments, and in their execution, to decrease or to
eliminate [by randomization]* all the causes of fortuitous variation which
might obscure the evidence.
Statistical Methods and Scientific Inference, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1956, p.97; *3rd edition, 1973.
I find this case very confusing, and have not
thoroughly checked the result.
A class of
enumeration of importance in genetics. Proceedings of the Royal Society
B 136, 509–520, 1950.
… the fact is that when I
cannot get a grip of a thing in my head I can very seldom make it go on paper.
Fisher to
C.G.Darwin, 16 July 1930. The Genetical
Theory of Natural Selection, Variorum Edition ed. J.H.Bennett, Oxford
University Press, 1999, p.304.
I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.
Scientific
thought and the refinement of human reasoning. Journal of the Operations
Research Society of
A ballet dancer gets her
ovation on the spot, while she is still warm from her efforts. A wit gets his
laugh across the table; but a scientist must expect to wait about five years
for his laugh. Recognition in science, to the man who has something to
give, is, I should guess, more just and more certain than in most occupations,
but it does take time. And when it comes it will probably come from abroad.
(Broadcast
talk) Listener 37, 662-663, 1947
It has been proposed [by
Sewall Wright] ... that the environment,
picturesquely renamed the landscape, governs the course of evolutionary change,
much as the field of force determines the trajectory of a comet.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B 121, 58-62, 1936.
.....................................................................................................................................
Fred Hoyle on Fisher:
Of
the books, I would like to recommend especially R.A.Fisher’s A Genetical Theory of Natural Selection
(sic) for its brilliant
obscurity. After two or three months of investigation it will be found possible
to understand some of Fisher’s sentences. I am genuinely sorry for scientists
of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided
a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the
briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of
wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he,
like the
Mathematics of
Evolution.