Ian Hacking Quotes on Truth
Ian Hacking was a Canadian philosopher of science whose work bridged the analytic and historical traditions in the philosophy of science. This page collects quotes attributed to Ian Hacking on the topic of truth, drawn from across the philosopher's works.
Quotes
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Attributed to Ian Hacking:
“Probability is double-faced from the start: aleatory and epistemic.”
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Attributed to Ian Hacking:
“Reasoning styles bring with them new ways of being a candidate for truth or falsehood.”
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“Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's a long and complicated story of the rise of a desire for scientific relativism. Part of it may well be simply sort of rage against reason, the fear of the sciences and a kind of total dislike of the arrogance of a great many scientists who say we're finding out the truth about everything—and here [with Kuhn] there was a way to undermine that arrogance.”
Ian Hacking, in Gary Stix, "A Q&A with Ian Hacking on Thomas Kuhn's Legacy as "The Paradigm Shift" Turns 50" (April 27, 2012) -
“A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'.”
The Emergence Of Probability,1975 | Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 34.