Quetelet

rates and their explanation

pp. 60-91

in: Stephen P. Turner, The search for a methodology of social science, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

Comte's disdain for statistics had resonance beyond its echoes in the milder criticisms made by Mill in A System of Logic. Claude Bernard, the influential biologist and philosopher of experimentalism, who carefully distanced himself from Positivism in the course of the dispute over vitalism which pitted Pasteur against Comte's followers (Virtanen, 1960, pp. 2–4), shared in Comte's and Mill's suspicion of the claims of the statisticians.