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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

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Ian Hacking
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: February 18
Historian
Philosopher
Professor
Vancouver
British Columbia
Ian MacDougall Hacking
Formal
Combination
Build
Ideas
Right
Instructive
Must
Combinations
Vocabulary
Signs

More quotes by Ian Hacking

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Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.
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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'.
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Acceptance means commitment, among other things.
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Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!
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By legend and perhaps by nature philosophers are more accustomed to the armchair than the workbench.
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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.
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The final arbitrator in philosophy is not how we think but what we do.
Ian Hacking
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The best reaction to a paradox is to invent a genuinely new and deep idea.
Ian Hacking
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If you were just intent on killing people you could do better with a bomb made of agricultural fertiliser.
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When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are.
Ian Hacking
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Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.
Ian Hacking
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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.
Ian Hacking