Ian Hacking Quotes

As long as a branch of science offers an abundance of problems, so long it is alive; a lack of problems foreshadows extinction or the cessation of independent development.

Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them.

Man armed with science is like a baby with a box of matches.

Nnothing tends more to the corruption of science than to suffer it to stagnate. These waters must be troubled, before they can exert their virtues.

The resolution of revolutions is selection by conflict within the scientific community of the fittest way to practice future science. The net result of a sequence of such revolutionary selections, separated by periods of normal research, is the wonderfully adapted set of instruments we call modern scientific knowledge.

All problems are finally scientific problems.

Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.

Scientific work will never stop, and it would be terrible if it did. If there were no more problems, you would put your hands in your pockets and your head on a pillow and would work no more. In science rest is stagnation, rest is death.

It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.

It is commonplace that a problem stated is well on its way to solution, for statement of the nature of a problem signifies that the underlying quality is being transformed into determinate distinctions of terms and relations or has become an object of articulate thought.

Large companies are very good at solving extremely complex problems in a globally optimal way.

Learning to expect problems saved me from a lot of wasted energy. Winners see problems as just another way to prove themselves.

Life is a series of problems to figure out how to solve gracefully and with dignity. That is what life is and I can't see it any other way.

What if the way we perceive a problem is already part of the problem?

To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.

A desperation to escape a problem is the wrong way. A passion to understand it is the right way

The routine of custom tends to deaden even scientific inquiry; it stands in the way of discovery and of the active scientific worker. For discovery and inquiry are synonymous as an occupation. Science is a pursuit, not a coming into possession of the immutable; new theories as points of view are more prized than discoveries that quantitatively increase the store on hand.

The science hangs like a gathering fog in a valley, a fog which begins nowhere and goes nowhere, an incidental, unmeaning inconvenience to passers-by.

Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.

If everyone is a changemaker, there's no way a problem can outrun a solution

Most man only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a subsistence.

If there is no way out, the best course of action is to find a way further in.

We can solve many problems in an appropriate way, without any difficulty, if we cultivate harmony, friendship and respect for one another.

The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error.