Ian Hacking is a retired University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. From 2001 to 2006, he taught science history and philosophy at the College of France. Rewriting the Soul, Mad Travelers, The Social Construction of What, and The Taming of Chance are just a few of his notable works.
The latter was selected by the Modern Library as one of the top 100 non-fiction books of the 20th century. Professor Hacking received the Molson Prize for the Arts from the Canada Council for the Arts in 2001, the Killiam Prize for the Humanities in 2002, and the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2009.
What is Ian Hacking known for?
Entity realism, which Hacking was a leading proponent of, is a scientific realism. This kind of realism promotes skepticism against existing scientific hypotheses while encouraging a realistic posture toward solutions to the scientific unknowns that mature sciences (of the future) have imagined.
The experimental and even engineering procedures of science, as well as their relative independence from theory, have also benefited from hacking. As a result, Hacking advanced philosophical thought beyond Kuhn and others’ first historical, but mainly theory-focused, shift.