I know that what I see through the microscope is veridical because we made the grid to be just that way. I know that the process of manufacture is reliable, because we can check the results with the microscope. Moreover we can check the results with any kind of microscope, using any of a dozen unrelated physical processes to produce an image. Can we entertain the possibility that, all the same, this is some gigantic coincidence?
-- Ian Hacking, Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism
-- Ian Hacking, Images of Science: Essays on Realism and Empiricism
That is (ETA: also) from Hacking’s Representing and Intervening.