Carl Gustav Hempel

By Samueldiaz

  • Carl Gustav Hempel Birth

    Carl Gustav Hemel was born near Berlin, Germany in the year 1905.

  • Carl Gustav Hempel Early Years

    In the year 1925, Hempel studied the subjects philosophy, physics, as well as mathematics in the Universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg and transferred over to the University of Berlin. From there, Hempel was then introduced to the works of David Hilbert, Paul Bernays and, Rudolf Carnap. After Hempel studied the work of Hilbert, Bernays and Carnap, Hempel came to believe that the applying logic to many of the philosophical problems was the answer to resolving problems in philosophy.

  • The beginning of Hampel's work

    In the fall of 1929, Hempel went to the University of Vienna where he studied with Moritz Schlick, Frederick Waismann and Carnap. As Hitler started to rise to power, Hempel ended up fleeing, moving to Brussels. The reason why Hempel fled is because he did not support the Nazi regime. After moving into Brussels, Hampel ended collaborating with Paul Oppenheim. Together they both ended up making “Studies in the Logic of Explanation”

  • Raven's Paradox

    The Raven's Paradox (also known as Hempel's Paradox) is a paradox coming from the question on what makes evidence for a statement. This means for example, looking at certain objects and seeing that they are not neither a raven or black increases the likelihood that all ravens are black even though these topics are not related.

  • Hempel's Dilemma

    This idea can be explained by saying that the entire world can be explained using laws in nature. This also means that all phenomenon's are natural phenomenon's. On one hand this can be described by our current physical theories such as general relativity. On another hand if an ideal physics was to be dicovered then this origional claim will be meaningless.

  • Deductive-nomological model

    According to Hempel, a theory is defined as a true statement whose quantifiers are not removable and do not have an individual constant. The idea for this definition is that the scientific theory deals with general properties expressed by universal statements. With this being said some laws such as the Kepler Law are only valid on certain conditions.

  • The Semi-Formal Explication

    Hampel taking the scientific explanations from Aristotle and revising it. In Hampel's semi-formal explication process, he had four conditions that had to be met. 1) must be a deductive consequence of the explanation, 2) must contain general laws, 3) must have empirical content and must be capable of test, 4) the explanation must be true.

  • Hempel's Late Life

    After retiring from the University of Princeton in 1973, he continued to entrench himself into his research Publishing many other significant articles. These articles include “Scientific Rationality: Analytic vs. Pragmatic Perspectives” (made in 1979), “Turns in the Evolution of the Problem of Induction” (made in 1981) and, “Limits of a Deductive Construal of the Function of Scientific Theories” (made in 1988). Hampel Died in 1997 due to Pneumonia.