Ian Hacking Quotes

Science is true, whether you believe it or not.

To a theoretical physicist, there is no greater joy than to see that this curious activity we call calculation - the depositing of ink on paper, followed by throwing away the paper and depositing new ink on more paper - can actually tell us something about reality.

The separation of Science from Knowledge was effected step by step as the Subjective Method was replaced by the Objective Method: i.e., when in each inquiry the phenomena of external nature ceased to be interpreted on premisses suggested by the analogies of human nature.

For first of all we must prepare a Natural and Experimental History, sufficient and good; and this is the foundation of all; for we are not to imagine or suppose, but to discover, what nature does or may be made to do.

In these researches I followed the principles of the experimental method that we have established, i.e., that, in presence of a well-noted, new fact which contradicts a theory, instead of keeping the theory and abandoning the fact, I should keep and study the fact, and I hastened to give up the theory.

Now this principle of induction cannot be a purely logical truth like a tautology or an analytic statement. . . .

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.

It is in the best interests of civilization and our economy and our nation to understand what objective truths are as revealed by the methods and tools of science.

Changes in the universe are not in the Absolute; they are in nature.

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

I find science so much more fascinating than science fiction. It also has the advantage of being true.

But in spite of the obvious effectiveness of mathematics in physics, I have never heard of a good a prioriargument that the world must be organised to mathematical principles.

The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.

In England, wit is at least a profession, if not an art. everything becomes professional there, and even the rogues of that islandare pedants. So are the "wits" there too. They introduce into reality absolute freedom whose reflection lends a romantic and piquant air to wit, and thus they live wittily; hence their talent for madness. They die for their principles.

It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

The history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomena that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understood in terms of fundamental causes and principles.

To construct a scientific theory from the data and to be able to recognize that it is a reasonable theory is possible only if there are some very sharp restrictive principles that lead you to go in one direction and not in another direction. Otherwise, you wouldn't have science at all, merely randomly chosen hypotheses.

Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth.

Miracles arise from our ignorance of nature, not from nature itself.

Science is a kind of glorified tailoring enterprise, a method for taking measurements that describe something ? reality ? that may not be understood at all.

The laws of nature are constructed in such a way as to make the universe as interesting as possible.

His main principles were indeed as follows: everything it is possible to imagine can also exist.

The principle of majority does not work when differences on fundamentals are involved.