The Social Construction of What?

[A] spirited and eminently readable book Hackings book is an admirable example of both useful debunking and thoughtful and original philosophizingan unusual combination of good sense and technical sophistication. After he has said his say about the science wars, Hacking concludes with fascinating essays on, among other things, fashions in mental disease, the possible genesis of dolomitic rock from the activity of nanobacteria, government financing of weapons research, and the much-discussed question of whether the Hawaiians thought Captain Cook was a god. In each he makes clear the contingency of the questions scientists find themselves asking, and the endless complexity of the considerations that lead them to ask one question rather than another. The result helps the reader see how little light is shed on actual scientific controversies by either traditionalist triumphalists or postmodern unmaskers. -- Richard Rorty * The Atlantic * Ian Hacking is among the best philosophers now writing about science He discusses psychopathology, weapons research, petrology, and South Pacific ethnography with the same skeptical intelligence he brings to quarks and electron microscopy. It is not his aim to enter a partisan controversy, still less to decide it. Instead, he clearly explains what is at stakenothing less than the intellectual authority of modern science. -- Barry Allen * Science * Hackings good humour and easy style make him one of those rare contemporary philosophers I can read with pleasure. -- Steven Weinberg * Times Literary Supplement * Hacking is a Canadian philosopher of science, with important studies of probability and psychology to his name. He is no less at home in Continental philosophy and social theory than in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. His ability to leap with enviable facility from one to the other qualifies him well to bring some order into this intellectual quagmire. -- Daniel Johnson * New York Times Book Review * The Social Construction of What? explores the significance of the idea of social construction, not simply in science but also in other arenas Hackings arguments are important. -- Kenan Malik * The Independent * The commonplace idea of science as the construction of models caught fire in the 1970s. It becameas Ian Hacking notes in his intelligent miscellany, The Social Construction of What?a rallying cry for the radical optimists who relished the thought that social forms are transient and resented any attempt to freeze them for eternity on the authority of something called science [Hacking] prefers to explore the territory that lies between the banalities. He concentrates on phenomena such as child abuse or women refugees, wondering in what sense they existed before they were conceptualised as such and noting the looping effects through which objective realities can be moulded by intellectual artefacts and hence by transient political and conceptual interests or even facts. * Times Higher Education Supplement * A welcome and timely arrival. Both a philosopher of science and a contributor to constructionism, Hacking speaks across the great divide. As his book title implies, he finds that the terms of this intellectual engagement vary considerably from case to case, and that the terminology of this engagement has all too often been sloppily employed on both sides. Examining an eclectic range of examples, from a nasty ethnographic spat over Captain Cooks murder on a Hawaiian beach to the influence of weapons research on the related hard sciences, he teases out the finer points that constitute the middle ground By meting out credit while illuminating complexities, nuances, and missteps on both sides, Hackings work implicitly urges a truce in the science wars. -- Kenneth Gergen * Civilization * This book offers a helpful contribution to the discussion of social constructionism and its limits, both for hard scientists who feel threatened by it

Ian Hacking was University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. He held the Chair of Philosophy and History of Concepts at the Collge de France.

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