Best Selling Books by Ian Hacking

Lost in the raging debate over the validity of social construction is the question of what, precisely, is being constructed. Facts, gender, quarks, reality? Is it a person? An object? An idea? A theory? Each entails a different notion of social construction, Ian Hacking reminds us. His book explores an array of examples to reveal the deep issues underlying contentious accounts of reality. Especially troublesome in this dispute is the status of the natural sciences, and this is where Hacking finds some of his most telling cases, from the conflict between biological and social approaches to mental illness to vying accounts of current research in sedimentary geology. He looks at the issue of child abuse—very much a reality, though the idea of child abuse is a social product. He also cautiously examines the ways in which advanced research on new weapons influences not the content but the form of science. In conclusion, Hacking comments on the “culture wars” in anthropology, in particular a spat between leading ethnographers over Hawaii and Captain Cook. Written with generosity and gentle wit by one of our most distinguished philosophers of science, this wise book brings a much needed measure of clarity to current arguments about the nature of knowledge.

With the unusual clarity, distinctive and engaging style, and penetrating insight that have drawn such a wide range of readers to his work, Ian Hacking here offers his reflections on the philosophical uses of history. The focus of this volume, which collects both recent and now-classic essays, is the historical emergence of concepts and objects, through new uses of words and sentences in specific settings, and new patterns or styles of reasoning within those sentences. In its lucid and thoroughgoing look at the historical dimension of concepts, the book is at once a systematic formulation of Hacking’s approach and its relation to other types of intellectual history, and a valuable contribution to philosophical understanding. Hacking opens the volume with an extended meditation on the philosophical significance of history. The importance of Michel Foucault—for the development of this theme, and for Hacking’s own work in intellectual history—emerges in the following chapters, which place Hacking’s classic essays on Foucault within the wider context of general reflections on historical methodology. Against this background, Hacking then develops ideas about how language, styles of reasoning, and “psychological” phenomena figure in the articulation of concepts—and in the very prospect of doing philosophy as historical ontology.

In this important study Ian Hacking continues the enquiry into the origins and development of certain characteristic modes of contemporary thought undertaken in such previous works as the best-selling The Emergence of Probability. Professor Hacking shows how by the late-nineteenth century it became possible to think of statistical patterns as explanatory in themselves, and to regard the world as not necessarily deterministic in character. In the same period the idea of human nature was displaced by a model of normal people with laws of dispersion. These two parallel transformations fed into each other, so that chance made the world seem less capricious: it was legitimated because it brought order out of chaos. Combining detailed scientific historical research with characteristic philosophic breadth and verve, The Taming of Chance brings out the relations between philosophy, the physical sciences, mathematics and the development of social institutions, and provides a unique and authoritative analysis of the ''probabilisation'' of the western world.

An introductory 2001 textbook on probability and induction written by a foremost philosopher of science.

Many people find themselves dissatisfied with recent linguistic philosophy, and yet know that language has always mattered deeply to philosophy and must in some sense continue to do so. Ian Hacking considers here some dozen case studies in the history of philosophy to show the different ways in which language has been important, and the consequences for the development of the subject. There are chapters on, among others, Hobbes, Berkeley, Russell, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Feyerabend and Davidson. Dr Hacking ends by speculating about the directions in which philosophy and the study of language seem likely to go. The book will provide students with a stimulating, broad survey of problems in the theory of meaning and the development of philosophy, particularly in this century. The topics treated in the philosophy of language are among the central, current concerns of philosophers, and the historical framework makes it possible to introduce concretely and intelligibly all the main theoretical issues.

Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. First published in 1975, this edition includes an introduction that contextualizes his book in light of developing philosophical trends.

This book is a philosophical study of the basic principles of statistical reasoning. Professor Hacking has sought to discover the simple principles which underlie modern work in mathematical statistics and to test them, both at a philosophical level and in terms of their practical consequences fort statisticians. The ideas of modern logic are used to analyse these principles, and results are presented without the use of unfamiliar symbolism. It begins with a philosophical analysis of a few central concepts and then, using an elementary system of logic, develops most of the standard statistical theory. the analysis provides answers to many disputed questions about how to test statistical hypotheses and about how to estimate quantities in the light of statistical data. One product of the analysis is a sound and consistent rationale for R. A. Fisher''s controversial concept of ''fiducial probability''.

As Foucault once identified a politics that centers on the body and another that classifies and organizes the human population, Hacking has now provided a masterful description of the politics of memory: the scientizing of the soul and the wounds it can receive.

Reflections on the Reality of transient mental illnessThis text uses the case of Albert Dadas, the first diagnosed "mad traveller", to weigh the legitimacy of cultural versus physical symptoms in the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders. The author argues that psychological symptoms find niches where transient illnesses flourish.

This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. ''Representing'' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. ''Intervening'' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology.

Hacking explores how mathematics became possible for the human race, and how it ensured our status as the dominant species.

This groundbreaking collection of contributions by leading philosophers offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself.

This is an introductory textbook on probability and induction written by one of the world''s foremost philosophers of science. The book has been designed to offer maximal accessibility to the widest range of students (not only those majoring in philosophy) and assumes no formal training in elementary symbolic logic. It offers a comprehensive course covering all basic definitions of induction and probability, and it considers such topics as decision theory, Bayesianism, frequency ideas, and the philosophical problem of induction. The key features of the book are a lively and vigorous prose style; lucid and systematic organisation and presentation of the ideas; many practical applications; a rich supply of exercises drawing on examples from such fields as psychology, ecology, economics, bioethics, engineering, and political science; numerous brief historical accounts of how fundamental ideas of probability and induction developed; a full bibliography of further reading. Although designed primarily for courses in philosophy, the book could certainly be read and enjoyed by those in the social sciences (particularly psychology, economics, political science and sociology) or medical sciences (such as epidemiology) seeking a reader-friendly account of the basic ideas of probability and induction.