ABSTRACT
This chapter corrects or clarifies important aspects of the historical record that pre-date the discovery of linear mathematical correlation by Francis Galton in the late 19th century. For example, the fact that Auguste Bravais is sometimes credited with being the first to intentionally use the word correlation in a mathematical sense is shown to be false. Also clearly shown to be false is the claim that Henry Bowditch played a significant role in the history of the discovery of mathematical correlation. Among the 19th-century authors discussed in this chapter are: Georges Cuvier (paleontologist), Charles Lyell (geologist), August Bravais (polymath), William Grove (physicist), Charles Darwin (naturalist), Thomas Huxley (biologist), Herbert Spencer (philosopher), Richard Owen (zoologist), Charles Bray (sociologist), Joseph Le Conte (botanist), William Jevons (economist), Richard Littledale (reverend), Henry Bowditch (physiologist), and Alexander Bell (inventor). Despite that variety of sources over the span of a century, their uses of the words relation, co-relation, and correlation were remarkably similar. The meanings given by those authors to those words did not vary much from author to author nor decade to decade, except in a few incidental cases that foreshadowed the change that would occur on December 20, 1888, when Francis Galton introduced a completely new set of meanings.
