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Carl Gustav Hempel
Born on January 8th, 1905 in Oranienburg, Germany Hempel studied at The University of Berlin where he received his Ph.D. in 1934. Soon After Receiving his Ph.D. he fled Europe to America due to The Nazis coming into power. He taught soon became a professor where he taught at Yale, the Princeton Universities, and the University of Pittsburg. After decades of critiquing and defending logical positivism or logical empiricism, he died of pneumonia on November 9th, 1997. -
The Deductive Nomological Model
The deductive nomological scientific model or the “DN model” was created by Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim to clarify relationships between Hypotheses, conclusions, and Scientific laws. A hypothesis being predictions of laws within a set of predetermined conditions and conclusions is the consequence of those conditions. Despite the DN model being deemed obsolete after the fall of logical empiricism it remained an effective method when applied to physics. -
The Raven Paradox
Hempel used Algebra to explain this paradox, but without pulling out a calculator, this is what it means. If "all Ravens are black", and "all non-black things are not Ravens" you can confirm that "all Ravens are black" by confirming anything that isn't black is also non-raven. For example, a yellow banana proves that "Ravens are black" because the banana is neither black nor a raven, but logically this has nothing to do with ravens.
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Hempel's Dilemma
During the early 1930s to the late 1950s, there was a Philosophical ideology being proposed known as Physicalism. Physicalism when applied to Physics, means “Everything is physics and can be defined by it” and Hempel disagreed with this theory. His dilemma is less of a thought experiment and more of a question that essentially means “we don't know everything about Physics now and we probably won’t in the future so how can we deem everything is Physics?”.