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Ian Hacking was born in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 18, 1936 and he is still alive today. -
Ian Hacking earned his undergraduate degrees from the university of British Colombia in 1956, and at the University of Cambridge in 1958. He earned his PhD at Cambridge in 1962. -
Hacking began teaching at Princeton University in 1960. He was a research fellow at Cambridge from 1962-1964. He became assistant professor at the University of British Colombia in 1964, then associate professor until 1969. He then become a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto in 1983. He retired from teaching in 2011. -
Entities are things with distinct and independent existence. Hacking believes we should believe in entities suggested by scientific theories, but we should also be wary of the theories at the same time. He is known for taking philosophical thinking one step further than Thomas Khun. He was strongly influenced by Casimir Lewey, his professor at Cambridge University, and considers himself a "Cambridge analytic philosopher". -
Entity Realism was introduced by Nancy Cartwright and Ian Hacking. It is a position that believes scientific theories are true and can only be considered true if and only if scientists refer to phenomena that can be routinely used to create affects and have the means to investigate it. -
It is a form of selective scientific realism, claiming that our casual interaction with unobservable entities, such as DNA molecules and atoms, justifies our beliefs in the existence of unobservable entities. -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mYfVgdtfUY This video is on the longer side, but it has a lot of good information and good key points and moments.
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