The autonomy of statistical law

Abstract

London, 9 February 1877 The typical laws are those which most nearly express what takes place in nature generally; they may never be exactly correct in any one case, but at the same time they will always be approximately true and always serviceable for explanation …. They show us that natural selection does not act by carving out each new generation according to a definite pattern on a Procrustean bed, irrespective of waste. They also explain how small a contribution is made to future generations by those who deviate widely from the mean, either in excess or deficiency, and they enable us to discover the precise sources whence the deficiencies in the produce of exceptional types are supplied, and their relative contributions. We see by them that the ordinary genealogical course of a race consists in a constant outgrowth from its centre, a constant dying away at its margins, and a tendency of the scanty remnants of all exceptional members to revert to that mediocrity, whence the majority of their ancestors originally sprang.