Editing Karl Pearson (section)

==Political views and eugenics==
{{Eugenics sidebar|pre-war academics}}
Pearson was a "[[Negative and positive atheism|zealous]]" atheist, "[[Freethought|freethinker]]",<ref>McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' Rule Cracked the Enigma Code, Hunted Down Russian Submarines, and Emerged Triumphant from Two Centuries of Controversy: Yale UP, 2011. Print. "Karl Pearson...was a zealous atheist..."</ref><ref>[[Theodore Porter|Porter, Theodore M.]] Karl Pearson: The Scientific Life in a Statistical Age. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004. Print.</ref> and socialist. He gave lectures on such issues as "[[The woman question|the woman's question]]" (this was the era of the [[suffragette|suffragist movement]] in the UK)<ref>Pearson, Karl (1888). [https://archive.org/stream/ethicoffreethoug00pear#page/370/mode/2up "The Woman's Question,"] in ''The Ethic of Freethought''. London: T. Fisher Unwin, pp. 370–394.</ref> and upon [[Karl Marx]]. His commitment to socialism and its ideals led him to refuse the offer of being created an OBE ([[British honours system|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 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."<ref>Pearson, Karl (1901). [https://archive.org/stream/nationallifefro00peargoog#page/n6/mode/2up ''National Life from the Standpoint of Science'']. London: Adam & Charles Black, pp. 43–44.</ref> 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 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 the stock, owing to the conditions in which society has placed it, is able to increase its numbers."<ref>Pearson, Karl (1892). Introduction to [https://archive.org/stream/grammarofscience00pearrich#page/n9/mode/2up ''The Grammar of Science'']. London: Water Scott, p.&nbsp;32.</ref>

<blockquote>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 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.<ref>Pearson, Karl (1901). [https://archive.org/stream/nationallifefro00peargoog#page/n6/mode/2up ''National Life from the Standpoint of Science'']. London: Adam & Charles Black, pp. 19–20.</ref></blockquote>

In ''The Myth of the Jewish Race''<ref>Patai, Raphael, & Jennifer Patai (1989). ''The Myth of the Jewish Race''. Wayne State University Press, p.&nbsp;146. {{isbn|978-0814319482}}</ref> Raphael and Jennifer Patai cite Karl Pearson's 1925 opposition (in the first issue of 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".<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Pearson | first1 = Karl | last2 = Moul | first2 = Margaret | year = 1925 | title= The Problem of Alien Immigration into Great Britain, Illustrated by an Examination of Russian and Polish Jewish Children| journal = Annals of Eugenics | volume = I | issue = 2| pages = 125–126| doi=10.1111/j.1469-1809.1925.tb02037.x | doi-access = free }}</ref>

Pearson concluding remarks on stepping down as editor of the ''Annals of Eugenics'', indicate a sense of failure of his aim to use the scientific study of eugenics as a guide for moral conduct and public policy.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Pearson | first1 = Karl | year = 1933 | title= VALE! | journal = Annals of Eugenics | volume = 5| issue = 4| page = 416 | doi =10.1111/j.1469-1809.1933.tb02102.x | doi-access = free }}</ref> 
{{blockquote|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 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 [[University College London|UCL]] announced that it was renaming two buildings which had been named after Pearson, because of his connection with eugenics.<ref>{{cite web|access-date=2020-06-20|title=UCL renames three facilities that honoured prominent eugenicists|url=http://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/19/ucl-renames-three-facilities-that-honoured-prominent-eugenicists|date=19 June 2020|website=The Guardian}}</ref>