If we betake ourselves to the statistical method, we do so confessing that we are unable to follow the details of each individual case, and expecting that the effects of widespread causes, though very different in each individual, will produce an average result on the whole nation, from a study of which we may estimate the character and propensities of an imaginary being called the Mean Man.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the limitations of statistics in understanding individual cases, while relying on averages to infer characteristics of a broader population.
James Clerk Maxwell's quote reflects on the nature of statistical methods and their implications for understanding human behavior. It suggests that while statistical averages can provide insights into large groups, they cannot capture the nuances and individual differences that exist within those groups. The reliance on averages, represented by the concept of the 'Mean Man,' can lead to oversimplified conclusions about complex human characteristics and behaviors. Thus, it warns us of the dangers of generalizations based solely on statistical data.
In practice
This quote can be used in a lecture on the limitations of statistical analysis in social sciences.
Science appears to us with a very different aspect after we have found out that it is not in lecture rooms only, and by means of the electric light projected on a screen, that we may witness physical phenomena, but that we may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
... that, in a few years, all great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.
Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.
What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
A zero-gravity flight is a first step toward space travel.
If your economy grows [by] 4 percent, you ought to reduce child mortality 4 percent.
The cyclic universe theory predicts no gravitational waves from the early universe.
I believe that science is the engine of prosperity, that if you look around at the wealth of civilization today, it's the wealth that comes from science.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.
After I give lectures-on almost any subject-I am often asked, "Do you believe in UFOs?" I'm always struck by how the question is phrased, the suggestion that this is a matter of belief and not evidence. I'm almost never asked, "How good is the evidence that UFOs are alien spaceships?"
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