Abstract

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Scots Philosophical Association and the University of St Andrews. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Hacking is a gripping writer with an ear for wickedly good turns of phrase. The joyous playfulness of his language can arouse interest in any topic whatsoever. He is also a skilled philosophical conversationalist, who can put long-dead philosophers into dialogue with those still living, because he has his finger deftly positioned on the pulse of our discipline. His most recent book is on a topic that has bedevilled a good many philosophers in history, Hacking no less than anyone else. It concerns the place of mathematical reasoning and other mathematical activity in the economy of human thought, and in the natural world generally. On display in this book, page after page, is that bedevilment.The book began as...