Canadian philosopher Ian Hacking, one of the most creative and influential thinkers in the philosophy of the sciences, author of seminal and pioneering contributions to the philosophy and history of the natural and social sciences, has died at the age of 87 after a long period of illness in Toronto.
Professor emeritus of the University of Toronto and honorary professor at the Collège de France, Ian Hacking was one of the most authoritative contemporary philosophers engaged in a genealogical reconstruction and interpretation of important scientific theories and concepts.
The announcement of the death, which took place on Wednesday 10 May, of the historian of science and philosopher of language was given by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the University of Toronto, where he taught. Born in Vancouver (Canada) on February 18, 1936, Hacking studied mathematics and physics at the University of British Columbia before moving on to the University of Cambridge, where he received a bachelor’s degree (1958) and a doctorate (1962) in moral sciences. After teaching at the University of British Columbia (1964-69), the University of Cambridge (1969-74) and Stanford University (1975-82), Hacking joined the University of Toronto, where he taught in the Department of Philosophy and the Institute of the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology from 1982 to 2004. In 2000, Hacking was the first English-speaker elected to a permanent position at the Collège de France, where he held the Chair of Philosophy and History of Scientific Concepts until his retirement in 2006. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the British Academy and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Canadian philosopher’s list of awards is very long.
If the image of the relationship between theory and experimental practice has changed, with implications both for epistemology and for the history of scientific thought, this is also due to the fundamental contributions made by Hacking over the last few decades. Hacking’s investigations have in fact made it possible to understand how the experiment, in addition to being an essential ingredient in the control of theories that aspire to scientificity, is a constitutive moment of the image of the world that science is elaborating. Among the traits of Hacking’s research is the original way in which he shows the importance of the historical reconstruction of concepts for the purposes of an epistemological discourse closer to the actual making of knowledge. With coherence, rigor and great expository clarity, punctual research into the history of science, reflections on the language of theories, methodological analyzes and wide-ranging considerations on the meaning of the changes undergone by a given model of knowledge have always been intertwined in Hacking’s works.