4 ms·

Ian Hacking has died

121 points by furcyd 3y ago

mitchbob 3y ago
Archived: https://archive.ph/2023.05.28-161235/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/science/ian-hacking-dead.html https://archive.ph/2023.05.28-161235/https://www.nytimes.com...
davidivadavid 3y ago
Still remember randomly coming across his book "Representing and Intervening" when I first got interested in philosophy of science. Pleasantly readable and illuminating. Great companion piece to other works by Cartwright or van Fraassen.
moritz 3y ago
“Ian Hacking was a one-person interdisciplinary department all by himself” — true that. One of the greats.
techno_tsar 3y ago
Rest in peace. He taught at my university (University of Toronto), and he was obviously a rock star in the philosophy department. Still, as an undergrad, I was too concerned with drinking and passing my classes to really give his work serious intellectual consideration. Moving into a new home the summer I graduated, I found a pile of books left on the curb. One of them was Ian Hacking's Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Science. I ended up tearing through it, utterly fascinated by the ideas and the philosophical landscape -- an agenda of discussion -- that he laid out so clearly, like a dictionary. I used to be quite naive when it came to science -- I thought philosophical topics around it were not worth thinking about. But he slapped the naivete out of me and single-handedly deepened my curiosity in science as an enterprise, as a social worldview, and as a variety of competing epistemic outlooks with profound implications. Reading this article, I'm glad that he received the accolades and attention that he had. So much to think about, and what an incredible amount of thinking he did in his life.
lukeasrodgers 3y ago
It’s been a long time since I read it, but Social Construction of What? was a great book, philosophy at its best, in my opinion: lending clarity and rigor to concepts that reach into law, psychology, medicine, ethics, and the every day.
icemanx 3y ago
[flagged]
voidhorse 3y ago
Hacking was great. RIP
kthejoker2 3y ago
The Emergence of Probability is a masterpiece, far greater than its purview on the history of statistics. Thanks for all the great writings!
acjohnson55 3y ago
I recently read the book Against The Gods (1996) on the development of mathematical probability theory in the early modern period, but I wasn't aware that the history in that book seems to have been covered also by Hacking in The Emergence of Probability (1975) and The Taming of Chance(1990). For anyone who has read these books, I'm curious how they relate.

121 points by furcyd 3y ago

Archived: https://archive.ph/2023.05.28-161235/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/28/science/ian-hacking-dead.html https://archive.ph/2023.05.28-161235/https://www.nytimes.com...

davidivadavid 3y ago

Still remember randomly coming across his book "Representing and Intervening" when I first got interested in philosophy of science. Pleasantly readable and illuminating. Great companion piece to other works by Cartwright or van Fraassen.

moritz 3y ago

“Ian Hacking was a one-person interdisciplinary department all by himself” — true that. One of the greats.

techno_tsar 3y ago

Rest in peace. He taught at my university (University of Toronto), and he was obviously a rock star in the philosophy department. Still, as an undergrad, I was too concerned with drinking and passing my classes to really give his work serious intellectual consideration. Moving into a new home the summer I graduated, I found a pile of books left on the curb. One of them was Ian Hacking's Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Science. I ended up tearing through it, utterly fascinated by the ideas and the philosophical landscape -- an agenda of discussion -- that he laid out so clearly, like a dictionary. I used to be quite naive when it came to science -- I thought philosophical topics around it were not worth thinking about. But he slapped the naivete out of me and single-handedly deepened my curiosity in science as an enterprise, as a social worldview, and as a variety of competing epistemic outlooks with profound implications. Reading this article, I'm glad that he received the accolades and attention that he had. So much to think about, and what an incredible amount of thinking he did in his life.

lukeasrodgers 3y ago

It’s been a long time since I read it, but Social Construction of What? was a great book, philosophy at its best, in my opinion: lending clarity and rigor to concepts that reach into law, psychology, medicine, ethics, and the every day.

icemanx 3y ago

[flagged]

voidhorse 3y ago

Hacking was great. RIP

kthejoker2 3y ago

The Emergence of Probability is a masterpiece, far greater than its purview on the history of statistics. Thanks for all the great writings!

acjohnson55 3y ago

I recently read the book Against The Gods (1996) on the development of mathematical probability theory in the early modern period, but I wasn't aware that the history in that book seems to have been covered also by Hacking in The Emergence of Probability (1975) and The Taming of Chance(1990). For anyone who has read these books, I'm curious how they relate.