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Birth and Death
He was a Canadian philosopher from Vancouver, British Columbia. His historical analyses of the natural and social sciences, along with mathematics,had a profound impact on philosophical discourse in the 20th and 21st centuries. -
First Publication titled Logic of Statistical Inference
In his first publication titled "Logic of Statistical Inference," Hacking adopted a philosophical approach to the analysis of statistics to examine the fundamental principles behind the use of statistical reasoning. Furthermore, he evaluated the methods employed by statisticians in their utilization of these principles, offering remedies for potential challenges that may arise within such work. -
Published The Taming of Chance
He suggested that the increased accessibility of statistics and probability from the 17th century and beyond gradually brought to light previously unnoticed patterns of human behavior. He cited suicide statistics from the early 1800s as an example of this transformation, occurrences that were previously attributed to chance began to exhibit correlations with specific external that included age, sex, marital status, geographic location, and methods in the case of suicide. -
Became a University Professor
In 1991 he became a university professor at Collège de France. -
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The Looping Effect
Hacking suggested that labels for individuals across all aspects of human existence. Once an individual is given a label, whether self-imposed or assigned by others, they assume all the social and cultural attributes associated with the label. He called this “dynamic nominalism. He also stated that labels are not fixed and can be changed over time which he called "dynamic nominalism" overall it is an endless cycle called the looping effect. -
Awards
Ian Hacking was given many awards over the years but the most notable are: 2008 Gold Medal for Achievement in Research which was awarded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. In 2009 the government of Norway awarded him with Holberg Prize. -
References
Fjelland, Ragnar & Strand, Roger. (2023). About Ian Hacking. Retrieved from https://holbergprize.org/en/holberg-prize/about-ian-hacking Studio Ninety9. (2020). Ian Hacking | Difference Between Nature and Culture? | Whiteboard Animation Video. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp7_iB9tsT8
