Klappentext

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, thefar-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.