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Born
Carl Hempel is born in Oranienburg, Germany on January 8th, 1905 (Murzi). -
The Vienna Circle
In 1929, Hempel Became part of the "Vienna Circle" while studying at the University of Vienna. He and its members were advocates of logical positivism. Hempel would make great contributions and refinements to the concept (Fetzer). -
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US Immigration/Teaching in NY
After immigrating to the US, he taught at City College (1939-1940) in New York and Queens College (1940-1948). During this time, he published articles based on the theory of confirmation and explanation (Murzi). -
Raven Paradox
Hempel formulated the "raven paradox", a paradox of confirmation within philopsophy that describes contradictions between instinctive knowledge and inductive logic. Hempel used the hypothesis "all ravens are black" as the classic example. An equal statement would be "All non-black things are not ravens". Using this logic (and why it's a paradox), any statement that says something isn't black could be seen as evidence for ravens only being black (Huber). -
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Yale
Worked at Yale University where he published "Problems and Changes in the Empiricist Criterion of Meaning” (1950), “The Concept of Cognitive Significance: A Reconsideration” (1951) and International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (1952) (Murzi). -
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Princeton
Taught at Princeton University, published major works. -
Deductive-Nomological Model
While at Princeton University, Hempel published several articles relating to the philosophy of science including "Deductive-Nomological vs. Statistical Explanation” in 1962 (Fetzer). The deductive-nomological model is a theory of what constitutes scientific explanations. According to the concept, a scientific explanation uses deductive structures. If the premises of an explanation are true, then the explanation itself must be true (Murzi) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xke813Dw-aU -
Aspects of Scientific Explanation
One of Hempel's works considered to be one of the most important in the philosophy of science. The concept of logical empiricism is widely used to illustrate scientific explanation. -
Hempel's Dilemma
Hempel's Dilemma refers to his claim against a concept called "physicalism". Physicalism is the idea that everything in the natural world can be described as having physical properties. Hempel argued that since the concept uses contemporary physics to define things, it is false because there's no way to prove that our knowledge of physics is complete. Hempel also argued that "ideal physics" is no basis either since it doesn't exist (Stoljar). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5wCPQXoDw -
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University of Pittsburg
Professor of philosophy -
Death
Carl Hempel Died on November 9th, 1997 in Princeton Township, NJ (Murzi).
