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Theory of Probability
In his early days, Hacking concentrated on probability theory and its implications for statistical inference. This illustrates how probability significantly impacted science and human life in the latter nineteenth & early twentieth centuries. For instance, probability is the foundation of the most influential twentieth-century theory of quantum mechanics. On the other hand, it also provides the foundation for one of the gold clinical research standards: randomized trials. -
Ian Hacking and Thomas Kuhn
"Crisis of Rationality" was primarily caused by Thomas Kuhn's book, The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn's "Thesis of Incommensurability" was seen as a defense of relativism. But Hacking proved that Kuhn, despite being new, still followed the same prejudice as his colleagues- philosophers. Science isn't just about making models of the world; it's about making a difference. Science represents and intervenes in the world, and most philosophers of science thought it was just accidental. -
Advancing the Idea of Taming of Chance
Hacking further advanced the idea of taming of chance in his social science study. He proposed that once certain aspects of human nature had been understood statistically, human nature was conceptualized as a bell curve. On this basis, there was a sharp distinction between the mean, regarded as the norm, and the outliers, regarded as outliers. This paradigm shift led to a new focus on normality and an urge to normalize, especially in mental health. -
Mental Health & Labels
According to Hacking there are categories in mental health and labels are then created. labels are constantly being made in all areas of life. Once you get a label, you inherit all these social and cultural traits. This effect of the label on you is what Hacking called dynamic nominalism. Plus, labels aren't set in stone - they can be changed by us, like people can be changed by the labels we put on them. Hacking calls this the looping effect - an infinite cycle of label and person interaction.