This book offers a systematized overview of Ian Hacking's work. It presents Hacking's oeuvre as a network made up of four interconnected key nodes: styles of scientific thinking & doing, probability, making up people, and experimentation and scientific realism.

Its central claim is that Michel Foucault's influence is the underlying thread that runs across the Canadian philosopher's oeuvre. Foucault's imprint on Hacking's work is usually mentioned in relation to styles of scientific reasoning and the human sciences. This research shows that Foucault's influence can in fact be extended beyond these fields, insofar the underlying interest to the whole corpus of Hacking's works, namely the analysis of conditions of possibility, is stimulated by the work of the French philosopher.

Displacing scientific realism as the central focus of Ian Hacking's oeuvre opens up a very different landscape, showing, behind the apparent dispersion of his works, the far-reaching interest that amalgamates them: to reveal the historical and situated conditions of possibility for the emergence of scientific objects and concepts.

This book shows how Hacking's deployment concepts such as looping effect, making up people, and interactive kinds, can complement Foucauldian analyses, offering an overarching perspective that can provide a better explanation of the objects of the human sciences and their behaviors.

Autorentext

María Laura Martínez, PhD, is Adjunct Professor of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the Universidad de la República (Uruguay). The focus of her research are the History and Philosophy of Science and the History of Science in Uruguay. She has published articles in those areas and is author of 75 primeros años en la formación de los ingenieros nacionales. Historia de la Facultad de Ingeniería (1885-1960) [*The first 75 years in the education of national engineers. History of the School of Engineering (1885-1960)] (2014) and Realismo científico y verdad como correspondencia: estado de la cuestión (2009) [*Scientific realism and correspondence theory of truth; state of the art] (2009). She has received the National Prize of Literature in the category Philosophy Essays, from the Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay (2016).

Inhalt
AcknowledgmentsContentsIntroduction
Chapter 1. Taking a look at Ian Hacking's work1. The nodes of the network1.1 Scientific reasoning or thinking & doing style1.2 Probability1.3 Making up people1.4 Experimentation and scientific realism2. Constructing the network
Chapter 2. Styles of scientific thinking & doing. A genealogy of scientific reason1. Antecedents of style of reasoning or style of scientific thinking & doing2. Metaphysics, microsociology and anthropology3. Anonymous, autonomous and common to several sciences4. The relation style-ontology5. Stabilization techniques6. Style and positivity7. Style and truth8. An innovation with respect to Crombie: the idea of crystallization9. Practical incommensurability10. Essence of the style: classification
Chapter 3. Probability. Books that smell like other books1. The Emergence of Probability (1975)1.1 Archaeology in The Emergence of Probability1.2 The emergence of probability1.3 The Emergence of Probability, an example of historical meta-epistemology2. The Taming of Chance (1990)2.1 Words in their sites2.2 The erosion of determinism and the emergence of chance2.3 Genealogy in The Taming of Chance
Chapter 4. Making up people. A project of more than three decades1. Are there natural kinds?2. Dynamic nominalism3. Historical ontology4. Contingentism5. Making up people and looping effect6. Looping effect and memory7. Metaphor of the ecological niche8. Different types of kinds9. Kinds of people
Chapter 5. Classifications, looping effect and power1. An overview of power in Foucault2. Classification, looping effect and power3. Classifications, looping effect and resistance
Chapter 6. Experimentation and Scientific Realism. A return of Francis Bacon1. Experimentation and Scientific Realism2. The realism/antirealism debate3. Entity realism4. Creation of phenomena5. Saving phenomena?6. Representing and intervening in the natural and human sciences
Chapter 7. On Foucault's shoulders1. Scientific realism in Hacking's work viewed as a whole2. The analysis of conditions of possibility as the main interest of Hacking's work3. Michael Foucault: the texture in Hacking's work
EpilogueReferencesIndex