"A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'."

Ian Hacking Philosophy See all quotes by Ian Hacking →

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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.”

“Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!”

“Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.”

“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.”

“Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it.”

“When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The title of Kandinsky's first great theoretical work, On the Spiritual in Art and in Painting in particular which had a huge influence, thus has a rigorous meaning. It bears a twofold judgment, both …"

— Michel Henry

Philosophy1922–2002

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"The key word for me , but the real key word that triggers my rage is the word 'energy', when people start talking about it in terms of negative or positive types. For instance, "there's very negative …"

— Stephen Fry

Entertainment1957

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"The purpose of the State is, as we have already shown in our last lecture, no other than that of the Human Race itself:-to order all its relations according to the Laws of Reason. It is only after the…"

— Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Philosophy1762–1814

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"The competitive struggle forces men and women to spend an excessive amount of time in the kitchen of life and thereby denies them maximum opportunity of appropriating the values of library, conservato…"

— Kirby Page

Politics1890–1957

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