"We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to create."

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

"It is not merely that we want to see the game played fairly. We also want to see the rules changed, so that there shall be both less opportunity and less temptation to cheat, and less chance for some …"

— Theodore Roosevelt

Politics1858–1919

#justice

"All empire is no more than power in trust."

— John Dryden

Literature1631–1700

#power

"The great and growing populations of mankind are in the Third World. Countless millions are determined to come to the West, legally if they can, illegally if they must. And the more who succeed, the m…"

— Pat Buchanan

Politics1938

#ethics

"You should not surrender to these men once for all the rudders of your mind, as if of a ship, and follow them whithersoever they lead; rather, accepting from them only that which is useful, you should…"

— Basil of Caesarea

Religion329–379

#knowledge