Carl Hempel (1905–1997) was one of the 20th century’s great philosophers of science and a major proponent of logical empiricism. Born in Germany, he studied mathematics and logic at Göttingen with David Hilbert, before completing his PhD in philosophy at Berlin. In 1937 he emigrated to the United States to be Rudolf Carnap’s postdoctoral student at Chicago. Later he was professor of philosophy at Yale and then Princeton, before ending his career at the University of Pittsburgh. Hempel made canonical contributions to many central areas in philosophy of science, such as probability and confirmation theory, scientific explanation, induction, semantics, theory structure, and the logic of functional explanation in biology and the social sciences, some of which are reflected in the pieces collected here.
(1) ‘Le problème de la vérité’ (Separat ur “Theoria” häfte 2, och 3,1; 1937, pp. 206-246).
(2) ‘A Note on Semantic Realism’ (mimeographed draft typescript, 1950 with note from A.G., 8 pp.).
(3) ‘The Concept of Cognitive Significance: A Reconsideration’ (inscribed, pp. 61-77, Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol. 80 no. 1, July 1951).
(4) ‘Reflections on Nelson Goodman’s “The Structure of Appearance”‘, pp. 108-116, The Philosophical Review, Vol. LXII, No. 1, January 1953.
(5) ‘Empirical Statements and Falsifiability’ (inscribed, pp. 1-7, Philosophy, Vol. XXXIII No. 127, Oct, 1958).
(6) ‘Some Problems of Taxonomy’ (mimeographed draft typescript, 28 pp., later published in Proceedings of American Psychopathological Association Work Conference, 1959.
(7) ‘Inductive Inconsistencies’ (inscribed, pp. 439-469, Synthese Vol XII no. 4 Dec. 1960).
(8) ‘Logical Positivism and the Social Sciences’ (inscribed, pp. 163-194, Studies in the Philosophy of Science, eds Achstein & Barker, 1969).
(9) ‘Die Wissenschaftstheorie des analytischen Empirismus im Lichte zeitgenössischer Kritik’ (inscribed, photocopied draft typescript, 26 pp, 1975).
(10) ‘Der Wiener Kreis: Eine Persönliche Perspektive’ (pp. 21-26, Proceedings of the 3rd International Wittgenstein Symposium,1978).
(11) ‘Scientific Rationality: Normative vs. Descriptive Construals’ (inscribed, pp. 291-301, Proceedings of the 3rd International Wittgenstein Symposium,1978).
(12) A substantial typed letter on Johns Hopkins stationery to Grünbaum dated 1969 on semantic rules and terminology in philosophy and on physics questions concerning mass, velocity, etc., 2 pages, approx. 800 words.
