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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.

— Ian Hacking

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More quotes by Ian Hacking

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.

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

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

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

Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ian Hacking (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.