Ian Hacking Quotes

Probability is expectation founded upon partial knowledge. A perfect acquaintance with all the circumstances affecting the occurrence of an event would change expectation into certainty, and leave nether room nor demand for a theory of probabilities.

But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?

Probability is not a mere computation of odds on the dice or more complicated variants; it is the acceptance of the lack of certainty in our knowledge and the development of methods for dealing with our ignorance.

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Ccause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.

One shouldn't know the future.

Statistics: the mathematical theory of ignorance.

The laws of probability, so true in general, so fallacious in particular.

I don't believe in providence and fate, as a technologist I am used to reckoning with the formulae of probability.

Those who have knowledge, don't predict. Those who predict, don't have knowledge.

It is an hypothesis that the sun will rise tomorrow: and this means that we do not know whether it will rise.

There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

Uncertainty is everywhere and you cannot escape from it.

Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of that class of thinkers who have been educated to know nothing of the theory of probabilities.

The experts, for all their superior knowledge, rarely do better than chance in predicting future events.

Uncertainty means that we do not have a complete description of the world which we fully believe to be true.

The nice thing about baseball is that all of the possible outcomes are known - it's not quite as messy as the real world. That makes the game an excellent playground for probability.

If we knew enough, fortune would turn out to be nature.

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances.

It is impossible for a Die, with such determined force and direction which makes it fall on such a determined side, only I don't know the force and direction which makes it fall on such a determin'd side, and therefore I call that Chance, which is nothing, but want of Art.

Accident is simply unforeseen order.

There is no such thing as chance or accident; the words merely signify our ignorance of some real and immediate cause.

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which is supported by no appearance of probability.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

We know the laws of trial and error, of large numbers and probabilities. We know that these laws are part of the mathematical and mechanical fabric of the universe, and that they are also at play in biological processes. But, in the name of the experimental method and out of our poor knowledge, are we really entitled to claim that everything happens by chance, to the exclusion of all other possibilities?