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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:31 2006 |
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----------------- HES POSTING -----------------
The quotation is known. You can see Stephen M. Stigler The history of
Statistics, Belknap Press 1986: 327. According to Stigler, Pearson cited
Edgeworth's work on a priori probabilities (i.e. three papers published in
1884). Edgeworth's founded his theory of probabilities on Spencerian (hence
Kantian) ideas, but in a very complicated way, and also in Edgeworth's
style of writing. A critical point of E's foundations of probability is the
notion of a priori probability (on this theme I wrote a paper in History of
economic ideas, 1997).
So I think that the "cobweb" is only a metaphor. My interpretation of the
quotation is the following [but I think it is necessary to control
Pearson's Grammar]: Pearson "adheres to Laplace's doctrine of indirect
probabilities [i.e. probabilities not known directly by experience, i.e. a
priori probabilities] in its least acceptable form [Edgeworth's version of
a priori probabilities], relying here upon Mr. F. Y. Edgeworth's cobwebs"
[Pearson is entrapped by E's Spencerian arguments about a priori
probabilities].
Alberto Baccini
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