Description
Book SynopsisHacking here offers his reflections on the philosophical uses of history. The focus of this volume, which collects both recent and now-classic essays, is the historical emergence of concepts and objects, through new uses of words and sentences in specific settings, and new patterns or styles of reasoning within those sentences.
Trade ReviewWhat, asks Ian Hacking in
Historical Ontology, do I mean by live skepticism? His answer is that it is desirable to be ‘genuinely in doubt and terrified that one’s doubt might be warranted.’ It’s a healthy position for an enquirer into how new concepts and objects emerge in the province of philosophers and inventors, the novel uses of words and new ways of reasoning, and new interplays of power and knowledge. His essays demand attention and close reading. -- Maggie McDonald * New Scientist *
[Hacking] focuses on the interactions between what there is (or comes to be) and our concepts thereof. The kinds of objects he considers, both of which he regards as historical, are Aristotelian universals and their instances. He emphasizes that not only do ordinary physical objects and people and their institutions begin, develop, and end, but so do concepts, e.g., those language, knowledge, a child, (psychic) trauma, and scientific reasoning… Stimulating, incisive, and clear even in expounding theories of unclear writers. -- Robert Hoffman * Library Journal *
Table of Contents1. Historical Ontology 2. Five Parables 3. Two Kinds of "New Historicism" for Philosophers 4. The Archaeology of Michel Foucault 5. Michel Foucault's Immature Science 6. Making Up People 7. Self-Improvement 8. How, Why, When, and Where Did Language Go Public? 9. Night Thoughts on Philology 10. Was There Ever a Radical Mistranslation? 11. Language, Truth, and Reason 12. "Style" for Historians and Philosophers 13. Leibniz and Descartes: Proof and Eternal Truths 14. Wittgenstein as Philosophical Psychologist 15. Dreams in Place Works Cited Sources Index
