ABSTRACT
Most statisticians reject the doctrine in its original form; but it’s essentially retrospective orientation is profoundly relevant to the contemporary crisis in statistical theory. From 1820 onwards Quetelet peu apres was director of the Royal Belgian Observatory which he founded. In the ‘twenties he professed astronomy and geodesy at the Ecole Militaire. Quetelet’s belief in eternal laws of human society was en rapport with a social philosophy unruffled by such mishaps as the Commune. And its Calvinistic temper is hard to reconcile with the libertarian credo for which Eddington finds sanction by appeal to the principle of uncertainty lately propounded by the exponents of statistical mechanics. Inductive inference is the only process by which essentially new knowledge comes into the world. A Calculus of Judgments, as defined, ostensibly embraces a regimen of correct inference with respect to the credentials of hypotheses.
