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What, asks Ian Hacking in Historical Ontology (Harvard University Press, £11.95/$17.95), do I mean by live scepticism? His answer is that it is desirable to be “genuinely in doubt and terrified that one’s doubt might be warranted”. It’s a healthy position for an enquirer into how new concepts and objects emerge in the province of philosophers and inventors, the novel uses of words and new ways of reasoning, and new interplays of power and knowledge. His essays demand attention and close reading.