Abstract
The analytical notion of ‘scientific style of reasoning’, introduced by Ian Hacking in the middle of the 1980s, has become widespread in the literature of the history and philosophy of science. However, scholars have rarely made explicit the philosophical assumptions and the research objectives underlying the notion of style: what are its philosophical roots? How does the notion of style fit into the area of research of historical epistemology? What does a comparison between the Hacking’s project on styles of thinking and other similar projects suggest? My aim in this paper is to answer these questions. Hacking has denied that his project of styles of thinking falls into the field of historical epistemology. I shall challenge his remark by tracing out the connections of the notion of style with historical epistemology and, more in general, with a tradition of thought born in France in the beginning of twentieth-century.
Highlights
In thinking about scientific research we have become familiar with several analytical notions such as Ludwik Fleck’s ‘thought style’ (Fleck 1979 [1935]), Michel Foucault’s ‘episteme’ (Foucault 1969 [1972], 1994 [1966]), Thomas Kuhn’s ‘paradigm’ (Kuhn 1996 [1962]) and Imre Lakatos’s research programme (Lakatos 1978)
By saying that organizing concepts are ‘essential’ to the very functioning of our society Hacking means that ‘‘they produce a feeling of inevitability’’ (Hacking 2002a, p. 21): when we think of an organizing concept we find it difficult to conceive of a way of experiencing our world and ordering our society which does not rely on it
My analysis shows that the notion of style of reasoning can be better understood when it is put in connection with another notion, the notion of organizing concept, which I consider the core of historical epistemology
Summary
In thinking about scientific research we have become familiar with several analytical notions such as Ludwik Fleck’s ‘thought style’ (Fleck 1979 [1935]), Michel Foucault’s ‘episteme’ (Foucault 1969 [1972], 1994 [1966]), Thomas Kuhn’s ‘paradigm’ (Kuhn 1996 [1962]) and Imre Lakatos’s research programme (Lakatos 1978). Hacking provided to Crombie’s concept a metaphysical essence by contending that a style is not, tout court, only a way of reasoning or a method of inquiry He made precise claims about the features of styles that are dense in philosophical implications (Hacking 1982, 1983a, 1992b, c, 2002–2003, 2007, 2009): for instance, he claimed that a style introduces new types of objects and new criteria for the truth or falsehood of statements about those objects, that is new true-or-false sentences, i.e. sentences whose truth-value hinges on the style itself (style-dependent sentences). A style relies on a new kind of evidence for ‘finding out in the sciences’ (Hacking 2012, p. 3) and involves new types of explanations, criteria, laws, classifications, candidates for truth-or-falsehood and sentences that have no sense for someone who reasons in a different style (Hacking 1982)
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