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Carl Gustav Hempel was born in Oranienburg Germany on January 8th, 1905.
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With the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, Hempel immigrated to Brussels, Belgium to work with Paul Oppenheim and in 1936 published a book coauthored with Oppenheim. --- Hempel, Carl G., and Paul Oppenheim. Der Typusbegriff Im Lichte Der Neuen Logik: Wissenschaftstheoretische Untersuchungen Zur Konstitutionsforschung Und Psychologie. 1936.
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Hempel immigrated to the U.S. and began teaching at City College, NY. --- Hempel, Carl Gustav. "A Purely Syntactical Definition of Confirmation," in The Journal of Symbolic Logic, 8, 1943; "Studies in the Logic of Confirmation" in Mind, 54, 1945; "A Definition of Degree of Confirmation" (with P. Oppenheim) in Philosophy of Science, 12, 1945; "A Note on the Paradoxes of Confirmation" in Mind, 55, 1946; "Studies in the Logic of Explanation" (with P. Oppenheim) in Philosophy of Science, 15, 1948.
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In "Studies in the Logic of Confirmation", Hempel introduces the "Raven Paradox", which describes confirmation and disconfirmation based on what we observe. We intuitively know that observing a red chair doesn’t help us determine weather or not all ravens are black, but then again, maybe it does! --- Hempel, Carl G. “Studies In The Logic Of Confirmation (I.).” Mind, LIV, no. 213, 1945, pp. 1–26., doi:10.1093/mind/liv.213.1
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in 1948, Hempel accepted a position at Yale and taught there until 1955. his works during this time include: Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952
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In “Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science” Hempel developed fundamental principles in the theory of definition and technical terminology as they apply to how scientific theories are formed using qualitative and quantitative methods. --- Hempel, Carl Gustav. Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952
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In 1955, Hempel began teaching at Princeton University and stayed there until his manditory retirement in 1976.
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“Aspects of Scientific Explanation” was Hempel’s culmination work describing models of scientific inquiry. This work served as something of a “bible” for the philosophy of science. The main focus is the Deductive-Nomological Model, a scientific explanation model made up of two parts: the explanandum, a sentence describing what we want to explain, and the explanans, the successful explanation of it. --- Hempel, Carl Gustav. “Aspects of Scientific Explanation”, in Hempel, 1965: 331–496.
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“The Meaning of Theoretical Terms” criticized logical positivism and presented the problem of how statements can give meaning to theoretical terms. Hempel argues that an axiom of a theory cannot be interpreted in a way that makes the theory true, otherwise, every theory is a priori true. --- Hempel, Carl Gustav. "The Meaning of Theoretical Terms: A Critique to the Standard Empiricist Construal." In Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Vol. IV): North Holland Publishing Company, 1973.
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After his retirement from Princeton, Hempel took a position at the University of Pittsburg and taught there until 1985. --- Hempel, Carl G. "Valuation and Objectivity in Science" in Physics, Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (ed. by R. S. Cohen and L. Laudan), 1983; "Provisoes: A Problem Concerning the Inferential Function of Scientific Theories" in Erkenntnis, 28, 1988
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Carl Gustav Hempel died in Princeton, New Jersey in 1997 at the age of 92.
