John Stuart Mill

Mill is perhaps best known in the US for his essay On Liberty, standard reading in introductory political science classes. Mill was the most influential English-speaking philsopher of his day and wrote broadly on many topics. His connection with statistics and the scientific method derives from his book A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. In this text he builds on notions of Herschel and others and lays the foundation for both the modern concept of the scientific method and the deductive methods of hypothesis testing crystalized in the work of Neyman.

Mill's contributions to the social sciences in general and to political economy in particular are also enormous. His text The Logic of the Moral Sciences laid the foundation for much that followed in the social sciences. Mill's notions on deductive and inductive reasoning were expanded by W.S. Jevon (although Jevon thought of himself as refuting Mill) and became pervasive in the popular culture of the day such as in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle.

Mill was also a relentless advocate of equality for women. When Mill organized a massive petition drive to grant women the right to vote, he selected the female mathematician Mary Somervile as one of the signatories on the very first copy.

There are many biographies of Mill on the web. The article in Wikipedia is informative. Mill is most closely associated with utililtarian philosophy, and there is a page about Mill on the utilitarian website.

Born: 20 May 1806, London
Died: 8 May 1873, Avignon, France