CfP: Re-visiting Historical Ontology. A workshop

Donostia/San Sebastian (Spain), 23-24 October 2025 

In his 1999 Rothschild lecture, Ian Hacking (1936-2023) tried to clarify one of his historico-philosophical programs, historical ontology, and its relation to the then already established historical epistemology or what he preferred to call historical meta-epistemology. This project was indeed deeply related to his overall contributions to the history and philosophy of science: (i) the “new experimentalism” approach to the sciences (Hacking 1983; Ackermann 1989) or, more generally, the practice turn (Pickering 1992; Soler et. al. 2014); (ii) the “styles project”, which evolved from scientific “styles of scientific reasoning” (Hacking 1982, 1994, 2009) to “styles of thinking & doing” as “ways of finding out” in the sciences (Hacking 2012, 2015); or (iii) the approach to biosocial sciences and mental illnesses through notions such as “making up people” and the “looping effect” (Hacking 1990, 1995, 1998, 1999). 

Hacking’s (2002) particular reading of Michel Foucault’s use of the tag “historical ontology” was intended as a philosophical “history of the present”. That means a philosophical project aimed at understanding certain present events and how they have “come into being” (be it sciences, methods, scientific objects or concepts, classifications, etc.). However, many historians and philosophers of science studying the coming into being, transformation, or disappearance of scientific objects and practices did not always adopt Hacking’s terminology but instead used alternative, possibly different in meaning, tags such as Lorraine Daston’s (2000) “applied metaphysics”. 

This workshop aims to explore the topicality of historical ontology in contemporary history and philosophy of science. We invite contributions that deal with any theoretical aspect of historical ontology (not confined to Hacking’s interpretation), but we particularly encourage papers that put historical ontology into practice in specific case studies. These may include: 

•    Scientific Practice, Experimental Realism, Pragmatism and Materialism

•    Styles of thinking & doing (general or specific case studies)

•    Emergence, transformation or disappearance of scientific objects, concepts, styles, etc.

•    Classification, making up people and looping effects

•    Natural kinds

•    Philosophical Anthropology through Cognitive History (Ecological History).

•    Etc. 

We invite abstracts from historians and philosophers of science at any stage of their career to contribute to this workshop and ulterior publication. Please send them by July 20th to Jaume Navarro.