Ian Hacking Quotes
February 18, 1936, in Vancouver
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A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'.
Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 34 
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More Ian Hacking Quotes
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— Chapter 1, An Absent Family Of Ideas, p. 4
Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 28
Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31
Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!
Ian Hacking— Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31
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— Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 36
Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 102
When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 103
Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 14, Equipossibility, p. 132
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.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 139
Pascal is called the founder of modern probability theory. He earns this title not only for the familiar correspondence with Fermat on games of chance, but also for his conception of decision theory, and because he was an instrument in the demolition of probabilism, a doctrine which would have precluded rational probability theory.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 23
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.
Ian Hacking— Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 142
