Carl Gustav Hempel

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Carl Gustav Hempel
Confirmation theory
Notable ideas

Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel (January 8, 1905 – November 9, 1997) was a

epistemologist. He was a major figure in logical empiricism, a 20th-century movement in the philosophy of science. Hempel articulated the deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960s. He is also known for the raven paradox ("Hempel's paradox").[5]

Education

Hempel studied

University of Göttingen and subsequently at the University of Berlin and the Heidelberg University. In Göttingen, he encountered David Hilbert and was impressed by his program attempting to base all mathematics on solid logical foundations derived from a limited number of axioms
.

After moving to

University of Berlin with a dissertation on probability theory, titled Beiträge zur logischen Analyse des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs (Contributions to the Logical Analysis of the Concept of Probability). Hans Reichenbach was Hempel's main doctoral supervisor, but after Reichenbach lost his philosophy chair in Berlin in 1933, Wolfgang Köhler and Nicolai Hartmann became the official supervisors.[6]

Career

Within a year of completing his doctorate, the increasingly repressive and

Hebrew University in Jerusalem before becoming University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh in 1977 and teaching there until 1985. In 1989 the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University renamed its Three Lecture Series the 'Carl G. Hempel Lectures' in his honor.[9] He was an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences[10] and of the American Philosophical Society for which he served as president.[11]

Philosophical views

Hempel never embraced the term "logical positivism" as an accurate description of the Vienna Circle and Berlin Group, preferring to describe those philosophers, including himself, as "logical empiricists." He believed that the term "positivism," with its roots in the materialism of Auguste Comte, implied a metaphysics that empiricists were not obliged to embrace. He regarded Ludwig Wittgenstein as a philosopher with a genius for stating philosophical insights in striking and memorable language, but believed that he, or at least the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus, made claims that could only be supported by recourse to metaphysics. To Hempel, metaphysics involved claims to know things which were not knowable; that is, metaphysical hypotheses were incapable of confirmation or disconfirmation by evidence.

In his exploration of the philosophy of science, Hempel brought to light the significant contributions of 19th-century Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis. His examination of Semmelweis's systematic discovery in addressing a scientific problem provided a historical context for Hempel's own reflections. This account of Semmelweis's work notably influenced Hempel's thoughts on the role of 'induction' in scientific inquiry. He considered Semmelweis's approach as a pivotal example of how empirical evidence and inductive reasoning play a crucial role in the development of scientific knowledge, further enriching his perspective on logical empiricism.[12]

Hempel is also credited with the revival of the Deductive-nomological model of explanation in the 1940s with the publication of "The function of general laws in history".[13]

Legacy

In 2005, the City of Oranienburg, Hempel's birthplace, renamed one of its streets "Carl-Gustav-Hempel-Straße" in his memory.

Bibliography

Principal works

Essay collections

Articles

References

  1. ^ Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Behaviorism". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  2. ^ a b c Carl Hempel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  3. ^ Gandjour A, Lauterbach KW, "Inductive reasoning in medicine: lessons from Carl Gustav Hempel's 'inductive-statistical' model", J Eval Clin Pract, 2003, 9(2):161–9.
  4. ^ "Theories in Science". pages.mtu.edu. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  5. ^ Fetzer, James (17 December 2021). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 17 December 2021 – via Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  6. ISBN 978-0-521-62475-6
    .
  7. ISBN 978-1-55111-973-1.[permanent dead link
    ]
  8. ^ Hempel, Carl. "Carl Gustav Hempel's Papers". Special Collections Department, University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved 2013-09-17.
  9. ^ "Carl G. Hempel | Philosophy". philosophy.princeton.edu. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
  10. ^ "Carl Gustav Hempel". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Retrieved 2022-09-28.
  11. ^ Essays in honor of Carl G. Hempel. A tribute on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Internet Archive. Dordrecht : D. Reidel. 1970. pp. v.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  12. PMID 29302516
    .
  13. S2CID 16924146
    .
  14. JSTOR 2017635
    .
  15. ISSN 0026-4423
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0-674-59462-3
    .

Further reading

  • Holt, Jim, "Positive Thinking" (review of Karl Sigmund, Exact Thinking in Demented Times: The Vienna Circle and the Epic Quest for the Foundations of Science, Basic Books, 449 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIV, no. 20 (21 December 2017), pp. 74–76.

External links

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