Ferdinand Lassalle (11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864) was a German socialist activist and politician who founded the first German workers' party, the General German Workers' Association (ADAV), in 1863. He is best remembered as the initiator of the country's social-democratic movement, which after his death led to the formation of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1875.
101-444: Karl Pearson FRS FRSE ( / ˈ p ɪər s ə n / ; born Carl Pearson ; 27 March 1857 – 27 April 1936) was an English biostatistician and mathematician . He has been credited with establishing the discipline of mathematical statistics . He founded the world's first university statistics department at University College London in 1911, and contributed significantly to the field of biometrics and meteorology . Pearson
202-763: A Chair (all of whom are Fellows of the Royal Society ). Members of the 10 Sectional Committees change every three years to mitigate in-group bias . Each Sectional Committee covers different specialist areas including: New Fellows are admitted to the Society at a formal admissions day ceremony held annually in July, when they sign the Charter Book and the Obligation which reads: "We who have hereunto subscribed, do hereby promise, that we will endeavour to promote
303-555: A Historical Tragedy . Sent anonymously to the Royal Theatre, the play was rejected by a manager, causing Lassalle to publish it under his own name in 1859. The work was characterized by Eduard Bernstein , an early and sympathetic biographer, as awkward and prone to excessive oratory, unsuited for the stage despite several effective scenes. Lassalle wanted to live in Berlin and despite the ban in 1859 made his return disguised as
404-426: A future classless society . Instead, Lassalle considered the state as an independent entity, an instrument of justice essential for the achievement of the socialist program. Lassalle accepted the idea first posited by the classical economist David Ricardo that wage rates in the long term tended towards the minimum level necessary to sustain the life of the worker and to provide for his reproduction. In accord with
505-491: A high pitch of internal efficiency by insuring that its numbers are substantially recruited from the better stocks, and kept up to a high pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races." He reasoned that, if August Weismann 's theory of germ plasm is correct, the nation is wasting money when it tries to improve people who come from poor stock. Weismann argued that acquired characteristics could not be inherited. Therefore, training benefits only
606-451: A letter to Lassalle. This letter was delivered and the two met face to face within 48 hours. This was the first of several such meetings, during which Bismarck and Lassalle freely exchanged views on matters of common concern. This Bismarck-Lassalle correspondence was not made public until 1927 and was therefore not mentioned by earlier biographers. In September 1878, Bismarck was pressed by Social Democratic representative August Bebel in
707-476: A mechanism for inheritance, but rather on providing a mathematical description for inheritance that was not causal in nature. While Galton proposed a discontinuous theory of evolution, in which species would have to change via large jumps rather than small changes that built up over time, Pearson pointed out flaws in Galton's argument and actually used Galton's ideas to further a continuous theory of evolution, whereas
808-406: A mere recitation of Hegelian axioms. However, even the book's detractors had to admire the scope of the work and the publication gave Lassalle lasting status among German intellectuals. During this period, Lassalle was not politically active, although he remained interested in labor affairs. He left his legal practice and philosophy in favor of drama, authoring a play called Franz von Sickingen,
909-507: A particular mechanism of genetics was not a worthy pursuit of biologists, who should instead focus on mathematical descriptions of empirical data. This, in part led to the fierce debate between the biometricians and the Mendelians, including Bateson . After Bateson rejected one of Pearson's manuscripts that described a new theory for the variability of an offspring, or homotyposis, Pearson and Weldon established Biometrika in 1902. Although
1010-538: A request by Lassalle for another meeting and no further direct contacts between the pair were made. Élie Halévy would later write on this situation: Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action. Yet he viewed the emerging bourgeois parties as more inimical to the working class than the aristocracy and hence he supported universal manhood suffrage at
1111-586: A result our opinions as to moral conduct. Even at the present day there are far too many general impressions drawn from limited or too often wrongly interpreted experience, and far too many inadequately demonstrated and too lightly accepted theories for any nation to proceed hastily with unlimited Eugenic legislation. This statement, however, must never be taken as an excuse for indefinitely suspending all Eugenic teaching and every form of communal action in matters of sex. Nonetheless, in June 2020 UCL announced that it
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#17327933861201212-492: A sense of failure of his aim to use the scientific study of eugenics as a guide for moral conduct and public policy. My endeavour during the twenty-two years in which I have held the post of Galton Professor has been to prove in the first place that Eugenics can be developed as an academic study, and in the second place to make the conclusions drawn from that study a ground for social propagandism only when there are sound scientific reasons upon which to base our judgments and as
1313-628: A statistician himself and succeeded his father as head of the Applied Statistics Department at University College. Maria died in 1928 and in 1929 Karl married Margaret Victoria Child, a co-worker at the Biometric Laboratory. He and his family lived at 7 Well Road in Hampstead , now marked with a blue plaque . He died at Coldharbour, Surrey , on 27 April 1936. When the 23-year-old Albert Einstein started
1414-602: A time when the liberals preferred a limited, property-based suffrage which excluded the working class and enhanced the middle classes. This created a strange alliance between Lassalle and Bismarck. When in 1866 Bismarck founded the Confederation of Northern Germany on a basis of universal suffrage, he was acting on advice which came directly from Lassalle. And I am convinced that after 1878, when he began to practise "State Socialism" and "Christian Socialism" and "Monarchial Socialism," he had not forgotten what he had learnt from
1515-469: A wagon driver. Lassalle appealed to his friend, the aging scholar Alexander von Humboldt , to intercede on his behalf before the king to rescind the ban and allow his return. The appeal was successful and Lassalle was again officially allowed to live in the Prussian capital. Lassalle avoided revolutionary activity for several years thereafter. He became a political commentator and wrote a short book on
1616-408: A workers party, independent of the liberal German Progress Party . By arguing that the working class had nothing to gain from the liberal party, he was in a state of war with the liberal party and newspapers for the next months until his death. Lassalle soon began a new career as a political agitator, traveling around Germany, giving speeches and writing pamphlets in an attempt to organise and rouse
1717-654: A young woman named Helene von Dönniges and during the summer of 1864 they decided to marry. She was the daughter of a Protestant family then living in Geneva , who wanted nothing to do with Lassalle. The father, a historian, prevented Helene from seeing him and Lassalle protested vehemently. Apparently under duress, she soon renounced Lassalle in favour of another suitor, a Wallachian prince named Iancu Racoviță , to whom she had previously been betrothed. Lassalle sent dueling challenges both to Helene's father von Dönniges and to Racoviță, who accepted. Lassalle had no experience in
1818-839: A zoologist who had some interesting problems requiring quantitative solutions. The collaboration, in biometry and evolutionary theory, was a fruitful one and lasted until Weldon died in 1906. Weldon introduced Pearson to Charles Darwin 's cousin Francis Galton , who was interested in aspects of evolution such as heredity and eugenics . Pearson became Galton's protégé, at times to the verge of hero worship . After Galton's death in 1911, Pearson embarked on producing his definitive biography—a three-volume tome of narrative, letters, genealogies, commentaries, and photographs—published in 1914, 1924, and 1930, with much of Pearson's own money paying for their print runs. The biography, done "to satisfy myself and without regard to traditional standards, to
1919-408: Is a purely relative conception. An observer who travels at the exact velocity of light would see an eternal now, or an absence of motion. He speculated that an observer who travelled faster than light would see time reversal, similar to a cinema film being run backwards. Pearson also discussed antimatter , the fourth dimension , and wrinkles in time. Pearson's relativity was based on idealism , in
2020-419: Is all sentiment, and whether he refers to the cause he represented or to himself, he never speaks to the jury, but to the gallery, to an imaginary mass meeting, and after declaring a vengeance that should be "as tremendous" as "the insult offered the people," he ended with a recitation from Schiller ’s Tell . Also on theoretical and political matters, their opinions diverged. Indeed, Marx's essay Critique of
2121-737: Is confirmed by the Council in April, and a secret ballot of Fellows is held at a meeting in May. A candidate is elected if they secure two-thirds of votes of those Fellows voting. An indicative allocation of 18 Fellowships can be allocated to candidates from Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences; and up to 10 from Applied Sciences, Human Sciences and Joint Physical and Biological Sciences. A further maximum of six can be 'Honorary', 'General' or 'Royal' Fellows. Nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by Sectional Committees, each with at least 12 members and
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#17327933861202222-421: Is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society (a proposer and a seconder), who sign a certificate of proposal. Previously, nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, which was criticised for supposedly establishing an old boy network and elitist gentlemen's club . The certificate of election (see for example ) includes a statement of the principal grounds on which
2323-529: Is to leave them to fight it out among themselves, and even then the struggle for existence between individual and individual, between tribe and tribe, may not be supported by that physical selection due to a particular climate on which probably so much of the Aryan's success depended. In The Myth of the Jewish Race Raphael and Jennifer Patai cite Karl Pearson's 1925 opposition (in the first issue of
2424-561: The Drapers' Company Research Memoirs largely to provide a record of the output of the Department of Applied Statistics not published elsewhere. Pearson's thinking underpins many of the 'classical' statistical methods which are in common use today. Examples of his contributions are: Pearson achieved widespread recognition across a range of disciplines and his membership of, and awards from, various professional bodies reflects this: He
2525-650: The Galton Chair of Genetics —in accordance with Galton's wishes. Pearson formed the Department of Applied Statistics (with financial support from the Drapers' Company ), which combined the Biometric and Galton Laboratories . He remained with the department until his retirement in 1933, and continued to work until his death. In 1890, Pearson married Maria Sharpe. The couple had three children: Sigrid Loetitia Pearson, Helga Sharpe Pearson, and Egon Pearson , who became
2626-544: The Hohenzollern or the Lassalle dynasty. [...] Our talks lasted for hours and I was always sorry when they came to an end. Eduard Bernstein noted that it is highly unlikely that Bismarck was telling the truth about their relation. Owing to his premature death by a duel at age 39, just two years after his serious entry into German radical politics, Lassalle's actual contributions to socialist theory are modest. He
2727-530: The Karl Pearson page at the Department of Statistical Sciences at University College London, which has been placed in the public domain. The main source for that page was A list of the papers and correspondence of Karl Pearson (1857–1936) held in the Manuscripts Room, University College London Library, compiled by M. Merrington, B. Blundell, S. Burrough, J. Golden and J. Hogarth and published by
2828-802: The Old Jewish Cemetery . Lassalle and Marx became friends during the Revolutions of 1848 . When the protests were crushed, Lassalle was imprisoned and Marx fled Germany. They continued correspondence through letters, and would not meet again until 1861. In the meantime Marx grew to distrust Lassalle under influence of Engels , who had never much sympathy for him. Marx often responded to Lassalle's warm letters by mirroring this tone, but in his letters to Engels he expressed antipathy towards Lassalle, including calling him "the Jewish nigger Lassalle". Lassalle continued to believe that their friendship
2929-506: The Olympia Academy study group in 1902, with his two younger friends, Maurice Solovine and Conrad Habicht, his first reading suggestion was Pearson's The Grammar of Science . This book covered several themes that were later to become part of the theories of Einstein and other scientists. Pearson asserted that the laws of nature are relative to the perceptive ability of the observer. Irreversibility of natural processes, he argued,
3030-583: The Reichstag to provide details about his past relationship with Lassalle, prompting the Chancellor to make the following statement: I saw him, and since my first conversation I have never regretted doing so. [...] I saw him perhaps three or four times altogether. There was never the possibility of our talks taking the form of political negotiations. What could Lassalle have offered me? He had nothing behind him. [...] But he attracted me as an individual. He
3131-546: The Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1875. "Lassalle was the first man in Germany, the first in Europe, who succeeded in organising a party of socialist action", according to Élie Halévy . Or, as Rosa Luxemburg put it: "what Lassalle managed to wrestle from history in two years of flaming agitation needed many decades to come about". Ferdinand Lassalle is buried in Breslau (now Wrocław , Poland), in
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3232-486: The University of Breslau and later at the University of Berlin . There, Lassalle studied philology and philosophy and became a devotee of the philosophical system of Georg Hegel . Lassalle changed his name at a young age to disassociate himself from Judaism. Lassalle passed his university examinations with distinction in 1845 and thereafter traveled to Paris to write a book on Heraclitus . There, Lassalle met
3333-485: The University of Heidelberg under G. H. Quincke and metaphysics under Kuno Fischer . He next visited the University of Berlin , where he attended the lectures of the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond on Darwinism (Emil was a brother of Paul du Bois-Reymond , the mathematician). Pearson also studied Roman Law, taught by Bruns and Mommsen , medieval and 16th century German Literature, and Socialism. He became an accomplished historian and Germanist and spent much of
3434-521: The gene as the mechanism for inheritance. Pearson criticized Bateson and other biologists for their failure to adopt biometrical techniques in their study of evolution. Pearson criticized biologists who did not focus on the statistical validity of their theories, stating that "before we can accept [any cause of a progressive change] as a factor we must have not only shown its plausibility but if possible have demonstrated its quantitative ability" Biologists had succumb to "almost metaphysical speculation as to
3535-401: The law of rent , Lassalle coined his own iron law of wages . Lassalle argued that individual measures of self-help by wage workers were destined to failure and that only producers' cooperatives established with the financial aid of the state would make economic improvement of the workers' lives possible. From this, it followed that the political action of the workers to capture the power of
3636-426: The post-nominal letters FRS . Every year, fellows elect up to ten new foreign members. Like fellows, foreign members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science. As of 2016 , there are around 165 foreign members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS . Honorary Fellowship is an honorary academic title awarded to candidates who have given distinguished service to
3737-566: The 1880s in Berlin , Heidelberg , Vienna , Saig bei Lenzkirch , and Brixlegg . He wrote on Passion plays , religion, Goethe , Werther , as well as sex-related themes, and was a founder of the Men and Women's Club . Pearson was offered a Germanics post at King's College, Cambridge . Comparing Cambridge students to those he knew from Germany, Karl found German students inathletic and weak. He wrote to his mother, "I used to think athletics and sport
3838-471: The Court of Law attired like a fop. He was in the habit, too, of comparing himself with great men. Now it was Socrates , now Luther , or Robespierre , or Cobden , or Sir Robert Peel , and once he found his parallel by going to Faust . Heine told him that he had good reason to be proud of his attainments, and Lassalle took Heine at his word. Bertrand Russell said about Lassalle: "No one has ever understood
3939-486: The European nationalities were still firmly established, that national ideas were a factor of supreme importance, and that religion would long retain an influence which no one could afford to neglect, and he thought it possible, even under existing political circumstances, to give the initial impulse to a movement for transforming social conditions. On 11 May 1863, Otto von Bismarck , Minister President of Prussia , wrote
4040-463: The Gotha Program is written in part as a reaction to Lassalle's ideas within the socialist party of Germany . Lassalle was a German patriot , and supported Prussia in its quest for German unification. In February 1864, Lassalle wrote to Engels that despite being a republican since infancy, "I have come to the conviction that nothing could have a greater future or a more beneficent role than
4141-481: The Mendelians favored a discontinuous theory of evolution. While Galton focused primarily on the application of statistical methods to the study of heredity, Pearson and his colleague Weldon expanded statistical reasoning to the fields of inheritance, variation, correlation, and natural and sexual selection. For Pearson, the theory of evolution was not intended to identify a biological mechanism that explained patterns of inheritance, whereas Mendelian's theory postulated
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4242-812: The Publications Office, University College London, 1983. Additional information from entry for Karl Pearson in the Sackler Digital Archive of the Royal Society Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society ( FRS , ForMemRS and HonFRS ) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to
4343-439: The Royal Society has been described by The Guardian as "the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar " with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows (FRS), honorary (HonFRS) and foreign members (ForMemRS) are elected annually in late April or early May, from a pool of around 700 proposed candidates each year. New Fellows can only be nominated by existing Fellows for one of
4444-663: The Society, we shall be free from this Obligation for the future". Since 2014, portraits of Fellows at the admissions ceremony have been published without copyright restrictions in Wikimedia Commons under a more permissive Creative Commons license which allows wider re-use. In addition to the main fellowships of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS & HonFRS), other fellowships are available which are applied for by individuals, rather than through election. These fellowships are research grant awards and holders are known as Royal Society Research Fellows . In addition to
4545-511: The aftermath of his conviction, Lassalle moved to the Rhineland , where he continued to pursue the lawsuit of the Countess von Hatzfeldt (settled in 1854) and finished his work on the philosophy of Heraclitus, (completed in 1857 and published in two volumes the following year). Reaction to the book was mixed as some declared the work seminal while others, including Karl Marx , considered it
4646-599: The award of Fellowship (FRS, HonFRS & ForMemRS) and the Research Fellowships described above, several other awards, lectures and medals of the Royal Society are also given. Ferdinand Lassalle Lassalle studied philosophy at the Universities of Breslau and Berlin , and was involved as an agitator in the German Revolutions of 1848 . Lassalle's socialism viewed the state as
4747-519: The biometric approach to inheritance eventually lost to the Mendelian approach, the techniques Pearson and the biometricians at the time developed are vital to studies of biology and evolution today. Pearson's work was all-embracing in the wide application and development of mathematical statistics, and encompassed the fields of biology , epidemiology , anthropometry, medicine, psychology and social history. In 1901, with Weldon and Galton, he founded
4848-612: The cause of science, but do not have the kind of scientific achievements required of Fellows or Foreign Members. Honorary Fellows include the World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2022), Bill Bryson (2013), Melvyn Bragg (2010), Robin Saxby (2015), David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville (2008), Onora O'Neill (2007), John Maddox (2000), Patrick Moore (2001) and Lisa Jardine (2015). Honorary Fellows are entitled to use
4949-399: The causes of heredity," which had replaced the process of experimental data collection that actually might allow scientists to narrow down potential theories. For Pearson, laws of nature were useful for making accurate predictions and for concisely describing trends in observed data. Causation was the experience "that a certain sequence has occurred and recurred in the past". Thus, identifying
5050-493: The conservative Bismarck in his book Herr Basitat-Schulze, declaring that he "must inform Your Excellency that this work will bring about the utter destruction of Liberals and the whole Progressive bourgeoisie". Lassalle asked Bismarck to exert his influence at the Ministry of Justice to prevent the seizure of the book. The book subsequently appeared without police interference, but Bismarck, occupied with other matters, refused
5151-479: The designation the iron law of wages , and expounded to the laborers its full significance. [...] Laborers were told that this law could be overthrown only by the abolition of the wages system. How Lassalle really thought this was to be accomplished is not so evident. In contrast with Marx and his adherents, Lassalle rejected the idea that the state was a class-based power structure with the function of preserving existing class relations and destined to wither away in
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#17327933861205252-515: The disposition of the couple's property. Lassalle volunteered himself to her cause and the offer was readily accepted. Lassalle first challenged her husband to a duel , but his challenge was rejected. An eight-year legal battle followed in which Lassalle defended Countess von Hatzfeldt's interests in 36 different courtrooms. Ultimately, a settlement was made in her favor, bringing her a substantial fortune. In her gratitude, she agreed to pay Lassalle an annual income of 5,000 thalers (about £750) for
5353-427: The expression of the people, not as a construct of social class, and he argued that industry should be placed in the hands of the workers by the existing government, pressured by the labor movement. This was a form of state socialism opposed to the revolutionary socialism of Karl Marx , one of his greatest rivals. Lassalle based his politics on his " iron law of wages ", which posited that wages could never rise above
5454-528: The fellowships described below: Every year, up to 52 new fellows are elected from the United Kingdom, the rest of the Commonwealth of Nations , and Ireland, which make up around 90% of the society. Each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use
5555-441: The founder of the biometrical school for inheritance. In fact, Pearson devoted much time during 1893 to 1904 to developing statistical techniques for biometry. These techniques, which are widely used today for statistical analysis, include the chi-squared test , standard deviation , and correlation and regression coefficients. Pearson's Law of Ancestral Heredity stated that germ plasm consisted of heritable elements inherited from
5656-540: The good of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and to pursue the ends for which the same was founded; that we will carry out, as far as we are able, those actions requested of us in the name of the Council; and that we will observe the Statutes and Standing Orders of the said Society. Provided that, whensoever any of us shall signify to the President under our hands, that we desire to withdraw from
5757-470: The idea of right itself"; that is, determining the circumstances under which laws may be made retroactive when they come into conflict with previously established laws. Only briefly engaged in the revolutionary struggle during 1848, Lassalle reentered public politics in 1862, motivated by a constitutional struggle in Prussia. King Wilhelm I , who became king on 2 January 1861, had repeatedly clashed with
5858-1531: The improvement of natural knowledge , including mathematics , engineering science , and medical science ". Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Benjamin Franklin (1756), Charles Babbage (1816), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Jagadish Chandra Bose (1920), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1945), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955), Satyendra Nath Bose (1958), and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Raghunath Mashelkar (1998), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki Ramakrishnan (2003), Atta-ur-Rahman (2006), Andre Geim (2007), Bai Chunli (2014), James Dyson (2015), Ajay Kumar Sood (2015), Subhash Khot (2017), Elon Musk (2018), Elaine Fuchs (2019) and around 8,000 others in total, including over 280 Nobel Laureates since 1900. As of October 2018 , there are approximately 1,689 living Fellows, Foreign and Honorary Members, of whom 85 are Nobel Laureates. Fellowship of
5959-409: The journal Biometrika whose object was the development of statistical theory. He edited this journal until his death. Among those who assisted Pearson in his research were a number of female mathematicians who included Beatrice Mabel Cave-Browne-Cave , Frances Cave-Browne-Cave , and Alice Lee . He also founded the journal Annals of Eugenics (now Annals of Human Genetics ) in 1925. He published
6060-464: The journal Annals of Eugenics which he founded) to Jewish immigration into Britain. Pearson alleged that these immigrants "will develop into a parasitic race. [...] Taken on the average , and regarding both sexes, this alien Jewish population is somewhat inferior physically and mentally to the native population". Pearson concluding remarks on stepping down as editor of the Annals of Eugenics , indicate
6161-499: The liberal Chamber of Deputies, resulting in multiple dissolutions of the Diet. As a recognized legal scholar, Lassalle was asked to make public addresses dealing with the nature of the constitution and its relationship to the social forces within society. Lassalle replied by giving a speech wherein he set out that constitutional matters are merely questions of power. The liberal press was enraged by his speech. Lassalle reacted by holding
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#17327933861206262-476: The literature of all time and peoples". Lassalle defended a homosexual member of his party, Johann Baptista von Schweitzer , who was attacked merely because of his sexual orientation . Marx and Engels wrote about Schweitzer in a pejorative manner and made jokes about his homosexuality. Lassalle on the other hand defended Schweitzer against such attacks: Such behavior against a man of your character and your intelligence only proves how confused and narrow-minded
6363-451: The monarchy, if it could only make up its mind to become a social monarchy. In that case I would passionately bear its banner, and the constitutional theories would be quickly enough thrown into the lumber room". Marx was international, Lassalle was national. Marx regards social equivalence as only feasible in his Social Democratic Republic, from which religion was banned, and his idea is a federation of European Republics. Lassalle saw that
6464-404: The most striking, though at the same time most harmless traits of his character. His vanity was of the kind that neither hurts nor offends. Vanity seemed natural to him as it is to the peacock, and if he had been less vain he would have been less interesting. Even in his manhood, when at the head of a popular agitation, he was excessively fond of dressing well. He appeared both on the platform and in
6565-492: The needs of publishers or to the tastes of the reading public", triumphed Galton's life, work and personal heredity. He predicted that Galton, rather than Charles Darwin , would be remembered as the most prodigious grandson of Erasmus Darwin . When Galton died, he left the residue of his estate to the University of London for a chair in Eugenics. Pearson was the first holder of this chair—the Galton Chair of Eugenics , later
6666-533: The offer of being created an OBE ( Officer of the Order of the British Empire ) in 1920 and also to refuse a knighthood in 1935. A eugenicist who applied social Darwinism to entire nations, Pearson saw war against "inferior races" as a logical implication of the theory of evolution. "My view – and I think it may be called the scientific view of a nation", he wrote, "is that of an organized whole, kept up to
6767-491: The parents as well as from more distant ancestors, the proportion of which varied for different traits. Karl Pearson was a follower of Galton , and although the two differed in some respects, Pearson used a substantial amount of Francis Galton's statistical concepts in his formulation of the biometrical school for inheritance, such as the law of regression. The biometric school, unlike the Mendelians , focused not on providing
6868-478: The poet Heinrich Heine , who wrote of his intense young friend in 1846: "I have found in no one so much passion and clearness of intellect united in action. You have good right to be audacious – we others only usurp this divine right, this heavenly privilege". Back in Berlin to work on his book, Lassalle met Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt , a woman in her early 40s who had been separated from her husband of many years and who had an ongoing dispute with him regarding
6969-463: The poets; and then, over-wearied by too much idealism, I fancy I become practical in returning to science. Have you ever attempted to conceive all there is in the world worth knowing—that not one subject in the universe is unworthy of study? The giants of literature, the mysteries of many-dimensional space, the attempts of Boltzmann and Crookes to penetrate Nature's very laboratory, the Kantian theory of
7070-508: The point, in simple and terse language; sentence by sentence he develops incisively, and with ruthless logic, his own standpoint, and, without any peroration, ends with a summary of the political situation. Anyone would think that Marx’ own personality was in no wise concerned, and that his only business was to deliver a political lecture to the jury. Lassalle’s peroration, on the other hand, lasts almost from beginning to end; he exhausts himself in images – often very beautiful – and superlatives. It
7171-494: The political ideas of our people still are. I, for my part at least, whatever the members of our Association may say, will never hide the fact that I have the highest respect for you and set the highest value on yours, and I therefore leave it to you to show this letter to whomever you wish. Lassalle also responded by walking with Schweitzer, arm in arm, through Frankfurt . He reminded that in Ancient Greece homosexuality
7272-514: The post nominal letters HonFRS . Statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include David Attenborough (1983) and John Palmer, 4th Earl of Selborne (1991). The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British royal family for election as Royal Fellow of the Royal Society . As of 2023 there are four royal fellows: Elizabeth II
7373-469: The power of agitation and organisation better than Lassalle … The secret of his influence lay in his overpowering and imperious will, in his impatience of the passive endurance of evil, and in his absolute confidence in his own power. His whole character is that of an epicurean god , unwittingly become man, awakening suddenly to the existence of evil, and finding with amazement that his will is not omnipotent to set it right." In Rigi Kaltbad , Lassalle met
7474-535: The professor at University College London in 1883. In 1884, he was appointed to the Goldsmid Chair of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics at University College London. Pearson became the editor of Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) when William Kingdon Clifford died. 1891 saw him also appointed to the professorship of Geometry at Gresham College ; here he met Walter Frank Raphael Weldon ,
7575-552: The proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations made each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership. The Council of the Royal Society oversees the selection process and appoints 10 subject area committees, known as Sectional Committees, to recommend the strongest candidates for election to the Fellowship. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates
7676-414: The public peace. Lassalle was brought to trial to answer this accusation in Berlin on 16 January 1863. Lawsuits would continue to interfere with his political activity for the rest of his life. After a widely publicized trial at which he presented his own defense, Lassalle was convicted of the charges levied against him, sentenced to four months' imprisonment and assessed the costs of the trial. This term
7777-537: The rest of his life. Lassalle was a committed socialist from an early age. During the German Revolutions of 1848 , he spoke at public meetings in favor of the revolutionary-democratic cause and urged the citizens of Düsseldorf to prepare themselves for armed resistance in advance of the violence that was expected after the decision of the Prussian government to dissolve the National Assembly. Lassalle
7878-510: The same lecture two more times. In another speech, delivered in Berlin on 12 April 1862, later known as the Workers' Program, Lassalle assigned moral primacy in society to the working class over the bourgeosie, an assertion regarded as dangerous by the Prussian censorship. The entire print run of 3,000 copies of the pamphlet of Lassalle's speech was seized by the authorities, who issued a legal charge against Lassalle for allegedly endangering
7979-485: The scientific sense is thus essentially a product of the human mind and has no meaning apart from man." ( Ibid. , Ch. III, § 4) With significant post-war activity Pearson was a " zealous " atheist, " freethinker ", and socialist. He gave lectures on such issues as " the woman's question " (this was the era of the suffragist movement in the UK) and upon Karl Marx . His commitment to socialism and its ideals led him to refuse
8080-483: The sense of ideas or pictures in a mind . "There are many signs", he wrote, "that a sound idealism is surely replacing, as a basis for natural philosophy, the crude materialism of the older physicists." (Preface to second Ed., The Grammar of Science ) Further, he stated, "... science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the mind ... In truth, the field of science is much more consciousness than an external world." ( Ibid. , Ch. II, § 6) "Law in
8181-399: The socialist leader. The only stated purpose of the party was the winning of equal, universal and direct suffrage by peaceful and legal means. Lassalle was remembered by biographers as a contradictory personality, earnestly committed to the benefit of the masses, but driven by personal ambition and possessing extreme vanity. Indeed, one early biographer declared: [His vanity] was one of
8282-581: The state was paramount and the organization of trade unions to struggle for ephemeral wage improvements is more or less a diversion from the primary struggle. Lassalle considered Johann Gottlieb Fichte as "one of the mightiest thinkers of all peoples and ages", praising Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation in a May 1862 speech as "one of the mightiest monuments of fame which our people possesses, and which, in depth and power, far surpass everything of this sort which has been handed down to us from
8383-404: The stock, owing to the conditions in which society has placed it, is able to increase its numbers." History shows me one way, and one way only, in which a high state of civilization has been produced, namely, the struggle of race with race, and the survival of the physically and mentally fitter race. If you want to know whether the lower races of man can evolve a higher type, I fear the only course
8484-556: The subsistence level in the capitalist system. He died in a duel related to a love affair in 1864; ADAV remained the largest German socialist party until 1875. Lassalle was born Ferdinand Johann Gottlieb Lassal on 11 April 1825 in Breslau , Silesia (now Wrocław , Poland ). His father Heyman Lassal was a Jewish silk merchant and intended his son for a business career, sending him to the commercial school at Leipzig . However, Lassalle soon transferred to university, studying first in
8585-508: The trained generation. Their children will not exhibit the learned improvements and, in turn, will need to be improved. "No degenerate and feeble stock will ever be converted into healthy and sound stock by the accumulated effects of education, good laws, and sanitary surroundings. Such means may render the individual members of a stock passable if not strong members of society, but the same process will have to be gone through again and again with their offspring, and this in ever-widening circles, if
8686-594: The universe, and the latest discoveries in embryology, with their wonderful tales of the development of life—what an immensity beyond our grasp! [...] Mankind seems on the verge of a new and glorious discovery. What Newton did to simplify the planetary motions must now be done to unite in one whole the various isolated theories of mathematical physics. Pearson then returned to London to study law, emulating his father. Quoting Pearson's own account: Coming to London, I read in chambers in Lincoln's Inn, drew up bills of sale, and
8787-544: The use of pistols and only one day to exercise. At the Carouge , a suburb of Geneva , a duel was held on the morning of 28 August. Lassalle was shot in the abdomen by Racoviță and died three days later on 31 August 1864. Following the duel Racoviţă fell ill and died not long after Helene von Dönniges married him. At the time of his death, Lassalle's political party had 4,610 members and no detailed political program. The ADAV continued after his death, going on to help establish
8888-612: The war in Italy in which he warned Prussia against rushing to the aid of the Austrian Empire in its war with France. Lassalle followed this with a larger work on legal theory, published in two volumes in 1861 as Das System der erworbenen Rechte ( The System of Acquired Rights ). According to Bernstein, Lassalle wanted the book "to establish a legal and scientific principle which shall once for all determine under what circumstances, and how far laws may be retroactive without violating
8989-570: The working class. As he tried to make the working class break with the liberals, this would eventually lead to an alliance with the reactionary Prince Bismarck . In 1864, Lassalle made several secret appeals to Bismarck, later the main proponent of the Anti-Socialist Laws , in favor of the immediate implementation of progressive policies such as universal suffrage . He also asked for the protection of his own publications from police seizure. Lassalle attempted to make common cause with
9090-491: Was also a proponent of Social Darwinism and eugenics , and his thought is an example of what is today described as scientific racism . Pearson was a protégé and biographer of Sir Francis Galton . He edited and completed both William Kingdon Clifford 's Common Sense of the Exact Sciences (1885) and Isaac Todhunter 's History of the Theory of Elasticity , Vol. 1 (1886–1893) and Vol. 2 (1893), following their deaths. Pearson
9191-509: Was also elected an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, University College London and the Royal Society of Medicine, and a Member of the Actuaries' Club. A sesquicentenary conference was held in London on 23 March 2007, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth. Articles Miscellany Most of the biographical information above is taken from
9292-611: Was born in Islington , London, into a Quaker family. His father was William Pearson QC of the Inner Temple , and his mother Fanny (née Smith), and he had two siblings, Arthur and Amy. Pearson attended University College School , followed by King's College, Cambridge , in 1876 to study mathematics, graduating in 1879 as Third Wrangler in the Mathematical Tripos . He then travelled to Germany to study physics at
9393-520: Was called to the Bar, but varied legal studies by lecturing on heat at Barnes, on Martin Luther at Hampstead, and on Lassalle and Marx on Sundays at revolutionary clubs around Soho. His next career move was to the Inner Temple , where he read law until 1881 (although he never practised). After this, he returned to mathematics, deputising for the mathematics professor at King's College, London in 1881 and for
9494-400: Was genuine until at least 1862. Franz Mehring called Marx's "attitude to Lassalle [...] the most difficult psychological problem his life offers". The difference in character between the two men presented itself in a clear manner when they had to defend themselves for their support of 1848 revolutions, in front of a jury: Marx refrains from all oratorical flourish; he goes straight to
9595-426: Was later replaced by a fine upon appeal. On 22 October 1862, a few worker delegates that had visited London that had come back with left-wing ideas, published an open letter about the political and economic situation of the working class. Lassalle was delighted to find workers whose ideas went even further than the socialist statements which he made in public, and replied with his own open letter in which he called for
9696-421: Was not a Royal Fellow, but provided her patronage to the society, as all reigning British monarchs have done since Charles II of England . Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1951) was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow. The election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination and a period of peer-reviewed selection. Each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership
9797-524: Was one of the most intelligent and likable men I had ever come across. He was very ambitious and by no means a republican. He was very much a nationalist and a monarchist . His ideal was the German Empire , and here was our point of contact. As I have said he was ambitious, on a large scale, and there is perhaps room for doubt as to whether, in his eyes, the German Empire ultimately entailed
9898-675: Was overestimated at Cambridge, but now I think it cannot be too highly valued." On returning to England in 1880, Pearson first went to Cambridge: Back in Cambridge, I worked in the engineering shops, but drew up the schedule in Mittel- and Althochdeutsch for the Medieval Languages Tripos. In his first book, The New Werther , Pearson gives a clear indication of why he studied so many diverse subjects: I rush from science to philosophy, and from philosophy to our old friends
9999-589: Was remembered by Richard T. Ely , one of the earliest serious scholars of international socialism, as a popularizer of the ideas of others rather than an innovator: Lassalle's writings did not advance materially the theory of social democracy. He drew from Rodbertus and Marx in his economic writings, but he clothed their thoughts in such manner as to enable ordinary laborers to understand them, and this they never could have done without his help. [...] Lassalle's speeches and pamphlets were eloquent sermons on texts taken from Marx. Lassalle gave to Ricardo 's law of wages
10100-409: Was renaming two buildings which had been named after Pearson, because of his connection with eugenics. Karl Pearson was important in the founding of the school of biometrics, which was one of several competing theories to describe evolution and population inheritance at the turn of the 20th century. His series of eighteen papers, "Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution" established him as
10201-449: Was subsequently arrested for his involvement in this activity and he was charged with inciting armed opposition to the state. Although Lassalle was acquitted of this serious charge, he was kept in prison until he could be tried on a lesser charge of inciting resistance against public officials. He was convicted of this lesser charge and the 23-year-old Lassalle served a sentence of six months in prison. Banned from residence in Berlin in
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