Canadian Ian Hacking won Norway's $700,000 Cdn Holberg Prize Tuesday for his exploration of the philosophy of science, including the impact of the historical setting in which new ideas were formed.

The Norwegian awards committee said the 73-year-old Vancouver native's "research is a central contribution to bridging the gap that characterized the academic debates of the latter decades of the 20th century on how to understand science."

It said he made important contributions to the philosophical understanding of such fields as physics, language, probability, psychology and psychiatry.

"In spite of this diversity there is one regulative idea that pervades all his work: Science is a human enterprise," the University of Bergen committee said. "It is always created in a historical situation, and to understand why present science is as it is, it is not sufficient to know that it is 'true,' or confirmed. We have to know the historical context of its emergence."

Hacking, a professor at the University of Toronto and College de France, said in a news release that his personal favourite among his many works is "The Emergence of Probability" from 1975 because "that is when I really started to do philosophy in my own way."

In that book, Hacking explores the idea of probability first taking shape in the 17th century. In later works, he explores the development of probability analysis as a cornerstone of scientific thinking.

The Holberg prize was created in 2003 by the Norwegian government to honour work in the humanities, social sciences, law and theology. It was named in memory of Norwegian playwright and author Ludvig Holberg, who lived from 1684 to 1754. Last year's prize went to American literary scholar Fredric R. Jameson.

The 2009 prize will be presented Nov. 25 at an Oslo ceremony.