27+ Ian Hacking Quotes On Education, Religion And Socialism

Ian Hacking is a Canadian philosopher who is known for his work in the philosophy of science. He is particularly known for his contributions to the study of probability and inductive logic. He is also known for his work on the social construction of scientific knowledge and the history of statistics. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Ian Hacking on education, love, religion.

Top 10 Ian Hacking Quotes

1. Plutonium has a quite extraordinary relationship with people. They made it, and it kills them.
2. I have this extraordinary curiosity about all subjects of the natural and human world and the interaction between the physical sciences and the social sciences.
3. Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.
4. Molecular biology has routinely taken problematic things under its wing without altering core ideas.
5. If you were just intent on killing people you could do better with a bomb made of agricultural fertiliser.
6. A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'.
7. When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are.
8. We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to create.
9. From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have the right ideas.
10. Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

Ian Hacking Short Quotes

• In each case you settle on an act. Doing nothing at all counts as an act.
• Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.
• Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.
• The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea.
• The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do.
• Acceptance means commitment, among other things.

Ian Hacking Quotes About Science

Why should there be the method of science? There is not just one way to build a house, or even to grow tomatoes. We should not expect something as motley as the growth of knowledge to be strapped to one methodology. — Ian Hacking

Experimental work provides the strongest evidence for scientific realism. This is not because we test hypotheses about entities. It is because entities that in principle cannot be 'observed' are manipulated to produce a new phenomena [sic] and to investigate other aspects of nature. — Ian Hacking

There are two ways in which a science develops; in response to problems which is itself creates, and in response to problems that are forced on it from the outside. — Ian Hacking

Thers is this wonderful iconoclast at Rutgers, Doron Zeilberger, who says that our mathematics is the result of a random walk, by which he means what WE call mathematics. Likewise, I think, for the sciences. — Ian Hacking

Ian Hacking Famous Quotes And Sayings

Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts are hard to read and invite flights of fancy or corruption. — Ian Hacking

Much early alchemy seems to have been adventure. You heated and mixed and burnt and pounded and to see what would happen. An adventure might suggest an hypothesis that can subsequently be tested, but adventure is prior to theory. — Ian Hacking

Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it. — Ian Hacking

The bad player is the one who tries to calculate and play with the odds, as if his game, his life, were one of a large number of games. To do so is at best to succumb to another necessity, the necessity of large numbers. The good player does not fool himself, and accepts that there is exactly one chance, which produces by chance the necessity and even the purpose that he experiences. — Ian Hacking

Philosophers of science constantly discuss theories and representation of reality, but say almost nothing about experiment, technology, or the use of knowledge to alter the world. This is odd, because 'experimental method' used to be just another name for scientific method.... I hope [to] initiate a Back-to-Bacon movement, in which we attend more seriously to experimental science. Experimentation has a life of its own. — Ian Hacking

By legend and perhaps by nature philosophers are more accustomed to the armchair than the workbench. — Ian Hacking

The important thing is to be able to understand anyone who has something useful to say. - There is a general moral here. Be very careful and very clear about what you say. But do not be dogmatic about your own language. Be prepared to express any careful thought in the language your audience will understand. And be prepared to learn from someone who talks a language with which you are not familiar. — Ian Hacking

Life Lessons by Ian Hacking

1. Ian Hacking's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the historical context of scientific and philosophical ideas in order to gain a fuller understanding of their implications.
2. He also highlights the need to be aware of the ways in which our beliefs and values shape our interpretations of scientific and philosophical concepts.
3. Finally, Hacking's work encourages us to be mindful of the potential consequences of our scientific and philosophical endeavors on society and the environment.