In every generation, there are quite firm rules on how to behave when you are crazy. Ian Hacking Read Quote
A ‘philosophical dictionary’ is not a dictionary of philosophy that you use to look up obscure thinkers or recondite terms. It is a collection of brief and pithy essays on diverse topics, informed by one vision, and usually arranged in alphabetical order. Ian Hacking Read Quote
It is so hard to make important decisions that we have a great urge to reduce them to rules. Ian Hacking Read Quote
Foucault’s genius is to go down to the little dramas, dress them in facts hardly anyone else has noticed, and turn these stage settings into clues to a hitherto un-thought series of confrontations out of which, he contends, the orderly structure of society is composed. Ian Hacking Read Quote
The anti-Darwin movement has racked up one astounding achievement. It has made a significant proportion of American parents care about what their children are taught in school. Ian Hacking Read Quote
Among the lesser effects of quantum theory are gaping holes in old ideas about causality. Ian Hacking Read Quote
If you were just intent on killing people you could do better with a bomb made of agricultural fertiliser. Ian Hacking Read Quote
Risk analysis can cater to any sort of hazard, but their profession owes its existence to a relatively narrow band of possible dangers. Ian Hacking Read Quote
Kuhn was the intellectual of whom many scientists said he’s ‘telling it as is it is’ insofar as talking about a process of ‘tinkering’ in terms of theory and experiment followed by radical changes. But often, what Kuhn had in mind were some very spectacular incidents in the history of the sciences that changed our way of looking at the world. Ian Hacking Read Quote
