[HN Gopher] Ian Hacking has died
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       Ian Hacking has died
        
       Author : furcyd
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2023-05-28 17:31 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | moritz wrote:
       | "Ian Hacking was a one-person interdisciplinary department all by
       | himself" -- true that. One of the greats.
        
       | mitchbob wrote:
       | Archived:
       | https://archive.ph/2023.05.28-161235/https://www.nytimes.com...
        
       | techno_tsar wrote:
       | Rest in peace. He taught at my university (University of
       | Toronto), and he was obviously a rock star in the philosophy
       | department. Still, as an undergrad, I was too concerned with
       | drinking and passing my classes to really give his work serious
       | intellectual consideration.
       | 
       | Moving into a new home the summer I graduated, I found a pile of
       | books left on the curb. One of them was Ian Hacking's
       | _Representing and Intervening: Introductory Topics in the
       | Philosophy of Science_. I ended up tearing through it, utterly
       | fascinated by the ideas and the philosophical landscape -- an
       | agenda of discussion -- that he laid out so clearly, like a
       | dictionary. I used to be quite naive when it came to science -- I
       | thought philosophical topics around it were not worth thinking
       | about. But he slapped the naivete out of me and single-handedly
       | deepened my curiosity in science as an enterprise, as a social
       | worldview, and as a variety of competing epistemic outlooks with
       | profound implications.
       | 
       | Reading this article, I'm glad that he received the accolades and
       | attention that he had. So much to think about, and what an
       | incredible amount of thinking he did in his life.
        
       | davidivadavid wrote:
       | Still remember randomly coming across his book "Representing and
       | Intervening" when I first got interested in philosophy of
       | science. Pleasantly readable and illuminating. Great companion
       | piece to other works by Cartwright or van Fraassen.
        
       | lukeasrodgers wrote:
       | It's been a long time since I read it, but Social Construction of
       | What? was a great book, philosophy at its best, in my opinion:
       | lending clarity and rigor to concepts that reach into law,
       | psychology, medicine, ethics, and the every day.
        
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       (page generated 2023-05-28 23:00 UTC)