---
title: "A. C. Crombie"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "A. C. Crombie"
aliases: []
first_seen: "2026-09-27T00:00:00.000Z"
connects_to: ["styles of scientific reasoning","Ian Hacking","history of science","philosophy of science"]
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
seek_code_commit: "f8a723c"
---


Historian of science whose taxonomy of six recurring "styles of scientific thinking" — simple postulation, experimental exploration, hypothetical modeling, taxonomic ordering, statistical analysis, and historical derivation — [[entity-ian-hacking|Ian Hacking]] took the word "style" from directly, reproducing Crombie's own six-fold list rather than proposing an original one. Crombie's fullest statement of the taxonomy, *Styles of Scientific Thinking in the European Tradition* (3 vols., 1994), has not yet been read to primary in this vault. Matters here as the intellectual ancestor of the "styles of scientific reasoning" term tested — and found not to match — against the vault's unnamed in-between bridge category ([[observation-vaults-in-between-bridge-category-not-exactly-named-by-located-literature]]).

## References
- [[claim-hacking-derives-styles-from-crombies-six-fold-taxonomy]]