The Holberg Lecture 2009: Ian Hacking

Lecture by Ian Hacking at the 2009 Holberg Prize Symposium. Ian Hacking was the 2009 Holberg Prize laureate, and the symposium was held in his honor.
Professor Hacking received his B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from the University of British Columbia in 1956 and a B.A. in Moral Sciences from Cambridge University in 1958, where he subsequently received both his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 1962.
Professor Hacking joined the University of Toronto in 1982, and was selected as a University Professor in 1991. From 2000 to 2006, he held the Chair of Philosophy and History of Scientific Concepts at the Collège de France.
Professor Hacking's work is enormously broad -- he is someone who makes sense of the fundamental issues that unite discrete disciplines. His work spans the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language, the theory of probability and statistical inference, and the socio-historical examination of the rise and fall of disciplines and theories. In each of these areas, his contributions have been transformative and inspiring. In addition to appearing in the best peer-reviewed academic journals, his work can be found in The Globe and Mail, New Republic, The New York Review of
Books, The London Review of Books and The Times Literary Supplement.

[@earthjustice01]

Perhaps Canada's greatest philosopher. This is a fascinating brief sampling of some of his major ideas from some of his major writings. Really an underrated philosopher. His field is the history of ideas. So he looks at chance and probability, risk, quantification, mental diseases of the times, eg multiple personality, and philosophy of language, which I would argue he wrote the definitive book on but at the same time maybe linguistic philosophy is a kind of disease of our time, Wittgenstein certainly felt that way but he just intensified the disease with his ideas about forms of life and family resemblances. Am I off topic here? I have to admit his lecture seems a bit disjointed, and so I'm reflecting that somewhat in my comment.

[@mrnicelynicely1]

Read this in the New York Times today: 'Ian Hacking, Eminent Philosopher of Science and Much Else, Dies at 87: Never limited by categories, his free-ranging intellect delved into physics, probability and anthropology, establishing him as a major thinker.'

[@AsdAsd-yf2on]

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