Ian Hacking, the distinguished Canadian philosopher of science, visited Taiwan in November 2007 and stayed for 19 days, at the invitation of Professor Yuann Jeu-Jenq at National Taiwan University. During his visit, Professor Hacking delivered a series of four lectures: "On the Historical Roots of Scientific Reason", "Where do Mathematical Objects come from?", "The Laboratory Style of Thinking and Doing", and "Realism and Anti-realism".

In Canadian Journal of Sociology 2004, Steve Fuller had reviewed Hacking's Historical Ontology (2002), and he wrote: 「Hacking is unique as a synthesist of the best of recent Anglo-American and French thought, which is probably the most natural role for a Canadian to occupy in the global intellectual conversation.」 Surely I agree that Professor Hacking is a great synthesist and more, but I don't understand why it would take a canadian to achieve that.

It is my pleasure and also pressure, to present my short and premature review of Professor Hacking's book Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Science of Memory. (Hacking, 1995). As a long-term admirer of Professor Hacking, I found it difficult for me to jump out of Professor Hacking's frame to analyze the issues regarding memory, history, and truth as presented in his book. In my angst to find out a good enough question to address in reviewing the book, I encountered a 40-year-old patient Lin, who was brought to me by her family.

It is always difficult to review something which is broad in concept and rich in contents. Historical Ontology is certainly one of these. Therefore, what I am going to do in this review is both selective and deductive. I first select what according to me the most essential parts of the book, then deduce some ideas which appear to be in sequence to the parts I select. They of course do not form a systematic structure, but a very limited reflection on a book which is characterized by a collection of papers manifesting nonetheless an essential part of Hacking's philosophy.

1. Hacking's entity realism

I. Introduction

The main concern of our paper is this: Will the account of science fostered by Professor Hacking's recent explanatory model of the development of various 「styles of scientific thinking」 (SSTs) be acceptable to social constructivists and scientific realists (the two extremes in the debate of science)? Or, will the account be preferred by only one side? More specifically, will the account of science fostered by Hacking's new approach be more like an internal explanation of the development of science, an external explanation, or a hybrid explanation?