Abstract
In this chapter, Taking a look at Ian Hacking’s work, I present a novel perspective on Ian Hacking’s oeuvre, develo** a systematic and structured outline of the author’s main works. The purpose of this chapter is twofold: to offer a general overview of Hacking’s work by means of a systematization of his bibliography, departing from the lesser-known axles of his work. Secondly, to look for an underlying texture in Hacking’s work, departing from his interest in the historical and situated conditions of possibility of the emergence of concepts and objects scientific, and explore how Michel Foucault’s thought works as a thread that runs across this web. Based on a wide review and critical analysis of his bibliography, I aim to organize Hacking’s work around four nodes: styles of scientific thinking & doing; probability; making up people and experimentation and scientific realism. I show the internal structure of each node, I review the most representative texts and I present the main notions with each one. The chapter explores a series of relations between the nodes which, besides showing the reticular structure of Hacking’s work, justify the order in which they are presented.
A philosopher I will not name complained once: ‘philosophers never take a look at what they discuss’. Well, not completely, Ian Hacking does take a look
Ian Hacking
(Álvarez Rodríguez 2002:8)
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Notes
- 1.
Whereas Hacking (1992b: 4–5) states that his choice of the term reasoning is related to this and with its Kantian echoes, my perception is that it does not completely fulfil Hacking’s objective: to include not just the “thinking” but also the “doing” of scientific practice. Neither does Hacking seem to be satisfied by this choice, since in 2010 he proposes to substitute his expression “style of scientific reasoning” by “style of scientific thinking & doing”, which in my view represents more accurately Hacking’s objectives and interests.
- 2.
Innate abilities such as, for example, “Logic, in the sense of Peirce ’s triad [deduction, induction, abduction] is a human universal […]” (Hacking 2009a: 99).
- 3.
See Williams (2006).
- 4.
App 0: Maths applied to maths: for instance, when Descartes applies algebra and arithmetic to geometry to create analytic geometry; App 1: The Pythagorean Dream: where it is considered that the essence of the universe is a mathematical structure; App2: Mathematical physics: the elegant mathematical structures provide surprisingly precise models of the processes found in nature; App 3: Mission-oriented applied maths: it covers what is frequently considered applied mathematics; its prototype is the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM); App 4: Common or garden, innumerable common uses of maths by merchants, accountants, financiers, farmers, carpenters, etc. App 5: Unintended social uses: unforeseen uses of mathematics, for example, the elitist use of mathematics by Plato; App 6: Bizarre applications: according to Hacking, these are uses of mathematics not only unforeseen by the mathematicians who do the work, but which would not have occurred to us but for the legacy of Wittgenstein.
Hacking considers that these distinctions between different types of applications are not clear-cut and the series should not be taken as implying a linear, progressive accumulation. What he wishes to emphasize is how the familiar expression ‘applied mathematics’ can mask such variety of uses (Hacking 2011a: 156–158; 2011b: 11–14).
- 5.
Hacking makes it clear, however, that he does not intend to be an interpreter of Wittgenstein, and even that he does not sympathize with everything written by the Austrian philosopher. He learns from reading Wittgenstein and incorporate that which he reads in his own idiosyncratic way, in his own philosophical thought. In this case, Hacking takes some of the lines of thought which appear in Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, because he considers that it suggests an alternative to the traditional philosophical conceptualization of mathematics and what it deals with, which has the benefit of not raising certain philosophical perplexities which seem impossible to overcome in the traditional conceptualization (Hacking 2011a: 155; 2014: 59).
- 6.
Hacking reminds us in an interview (Vagelli 2014:247) that his first approach to probability was along the lines of the linguistic analysis of the word “probability”. He still believes that the text he wrote about it was probably correct, but he did not consider it relevant. For this reason, he changed the key of his linguistic analysis for a historical analysis. However, it can be said that something of this pure and profound linguistic focus remained in the book of 1975. The result of this rigorous linguistic analysis were the two articles he wrote on possibility in the Philosophical Review at the end of the 60s and beginnings of 1970s (Hacking 1967 and 1975b).
- 7.
The problems of translation of the word evidence from English into other languages such as French, led Hacking to make some clarifications on his use of the term. In English, evidence is a false friend of his French homonym evidence. In French, the evidence is mainly intellectual. The word comes from videre, to see, but in French it means to see with the spirit, Descartes’ intuition. In English, evidence means the facts, the data, which indicate other facts, and sometimes the positive proof of these facts. In the Preface to the French edition of L’émergence de la probabilité (2002b), Hacking remarks that in chapter 4 of The Emergence of Probability (1975a), he uses the term in this English sense of factual evidence.
- 8.
In the period of peace following Napoleon, European states created bureaus to gather and publish statistics on all aspects of life and administration. These bureaus made possible the avalanche of printed numbers, from 1820 to 1840. Recherches statistiques de la ville de Paris et le département de la Seine was the beginning of what was called the avalanche of printed numbers.
- 9.
Hacking claims to choose this expression –with clear connotations in French but not systematically used in English—because it includes many social sciences, psychology, psychiatry, and a good part of clinical medicine. However, years later he claims that the so-called natural sciences include medicine, cognitive psychology and positive sociology, among other disciplines (2010, April 21: 3). Hacking does not clarify the reason of this change of mind, but I think it might be related with the latest results of his investigations about the distinction between the kinds of natural and human sciences, and his idea that, finally, there would not be a kind of human kinds to oppose to the kind of natural kinds.
- 10.
Hacking defines transient mental illnesses as those that appear in certain moments and places and then disappear. As examples he mentions, among others, hysteria in France at the end of the nineteenth century, multiple personality disorder, more recently, in North America, and anorexia in the present (Hacking 1999a: 100). Whereas Hacking seems to claim that hysteria has disappeared, and we assume that it is in this sense that he considers it a transient mental illness, as it will be seen in a later note, agreement on its disappearance is far from unanimous. Moreover, Hacking is also aware that there are illnesses that are transitory for biological reasons. He is not interested in them, but only in those that do not have, in principle, biochemical, neurological or bacteriological explanations of why they appear.
- 11.
“Taxonomy” is understood not only as a systematic classification, but also a hierarchical one. In this work we have preserved the use Hacking in each particular case of the notion of classification or taxonomy, respectively.
- 12.
I do not refer with this expression to Russell’s paradox.
- 13.
See Martínez (2009).
- 14.
It must be borne in mind that, even though the style of scientific reasoning as a condition of possibility is a prerequisite for the formation of concepts, institutions, etc., it is a necessary but not sufficient reason for the emergence of, in this case for instance, national statistics organisms.
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Martínez Rodríguez, M.L. (2021). “Taking a Look” at Ian Hacking’s Work. In: Texture in the Work of Ian Hacking. Synthese Library, vol 435. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64785-8_1
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