Ian Hacking

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Ian Hacking, CC (born 1936 in Vancouver) is a philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science. He has undergraduate degrees from the University of British Columbia (1956) and the University of Cambridge (1958), where he was a student at Trinity College. Hacking also took his Ph.D. at Cambridge (1962), under the direction of Casimir Lewy, a former student of Wittgenstein's. After teaching for several years at Stanford University, he joined the University of Toronto in 1982, was made a University Professor there in 1991 (he is now a professor emeritus). In 2001 he was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy and of the History of Scientific Concepts at the Collège de France.

Hacking is known for bringing a historical approach to the philosophy of science and was one of the important members of the "Stanford School" in philosophy of science, a group that also included John Dupre, Nancy Cartwright, and Peter Galison. Despite his strong interest in historical revolutions in science (following the work of Thomas Kuhn), Hacking defends a realism about science, "entity realism", albeit only on pragmatic grounds: the electron is real because human beings use it to make things happen. This form of realism encourages a realistic stance towards the entities postulated by mature sciences but skepticism towards scientific laws. In his later work (from 1990 onward), his focus has shifted from the physical sciences to psychology, partly under the influence of the work of Michel Foucault.

In 2002, he was awarded the first Killam Prize for the Humanities, Canada's most distinguished award for outstanding career achievements. In 2004, he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.