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Hempel, Carl Gustav (1905–97)

Gereon Wolters

Universität Konstanz
FB Philosophie, Fach D 15
D-78457 Konstanz
Germany
Phone: 0049-(0)7531 -88 2636(office)
-2827 186 (home)
Fax -88 2502 (office)
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Hempel, Carl Gustav (1905–97)

Carl Gustav Hempel was a leading figure of the logico-empiricist movement

that dominated much of American philosophy in the second third of the twentieth

century and has been a principal source of present day analytical philosophy. In

the spirit of logical empiricism Hempel aimed at a scientific philosophy with the

principal objective to arrive at a purely logical methodology of the empirical

sciences, including the social sciences. His most important contribution in this

respect is what can be regarded the first theory of scientific explanation. This

theory is referred to as ‘the Hempel-Oppenheim-model’, the ‘covering-law-model’

or the ‘standard-model of scientific explanation’. In his later years H. gave up the

idea of a purely logical (i.e. syntactical and/or semantical) ‘rational reconstruction’

or ‘explication’ of basic methodological concepts like explanation, confirmation,

law of nature, probability, type etc. Both the internal failure of this program and the

influence of Thomas S. Kuhn caused H. to acknowledge for a satisfying

reconstruction of methodological concepts also ‘pragmatic’ aspects of science in

the sense of social and historical circumstances of its development.

1. Biography

Hempel was born on 8th January, 1905, in Oranienburg (near Berlin,

Germany). He studied mathematics, physics and philosophy at the universities of

Göttingen, Heidelberg, and Berlin from 1923 to1929. After graduation

(‘Staatsexamen’) that qualified him to teach in secondary schools (‘Gymnasien’)

Hempel went to Vienna to study with Moritz Schlick and, particularly, Rudolf

Carnap. Both of them, together with the mathematician Hans Hahn and the
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economist Otto Neurath and others, had founded in 1923 the ‘Vienna Circle’

(‘Wiener Kreis’), that was to become the nucleus of logical empiricism. After his

return to Berlin in 1930 Hempel entered teacher’s training and teaching and

worked at the same time with Hans Reichenbach, head of the ‘Berlin Group’ of

logical empiricism, on a philosophical dissertation on the concept of probability.

After graduation in 1934 Hempel preferred to leave Nazi Germany and went to

Brussels to assist Paul Oppenheim, a private scholar, in carrying out philosophical

research that related principally to concept formation in empirical science. In

1937/38 Hempel worked for a year as research associate with Carnap in Chicago,

and again went back to Brussels until he found a post of instructor at City College,

New York in 1939. The academic year 1940 to 1941 saw him at Queens College,

New York, from where he went as associate professor to Yale in 1948. In 1955

Hempel became Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton. After retirement at

Princeton (1973) he worked as university professor at Pittsburgh University from

1977 until 1985. He died at Princeton on 9 November, 1997.

2. Major Contributions

Hempel has given important contributions (a) to the rational reconstruction

of methodological concepts, particularly the concept of scientific explanation; (b) to

the ‘universality thesis’, i.e. the thesis that the social sciences do not, and should

not, use methods that are essentially different from the methods of empirical

science, and (c) to concept formation and taxonomy in empirical science.

2.1 Scientific Explanation

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Hempel reconstructs scientific explanations of concrete events in nature,

history and society as arguments, i.e. as logical deductions containing as

premises (‘explanans’) at least one (general) scientific law L1 as well as initial and

boundary conditions Cr and as conclusion (‘explanandum’) the statement E

describing the event in question. We thus obtain the following model of ‘deductive-

nomological (D-N-) explanation’

L1, L2, ...,Ln The explanans

C1, C2,...,Cr [entails logically]

E the explanandum

In case the explanandum contains essentially a statistical law (e.g. for all x:

the probability of G, if F is given, equals r and as boundary condition that F is

given for some b) the explanatory argument does not deliver a deduction of the

explanandum statement E but rather gives inductive support for E, i.e. the

explanans shows that E was to be expected with a certain degree r of probability.

In simplified form (one statistical law, one boundary condition) we thus obtain the

following model of ‘inductive-statistical (I-S-) explanation’:

p(G, F) = r The explanans

F(b) [lends inductive support of probability r to]

G(b) the explanandum

In the case of I-S-explanation one must further assume that the explanans

is maximally specified, i.e. the explanans must contain all available information

that is possibly relevant for the explanation of the explanandum E. Or, in other
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words, the explanandum must contain all pertinent statistical laws and those

special facts that can be connected with the E-event by statistical laws. I-S-

explanations thus relate to the body of scientific knowledge at a given time, i.e.

they become ‘epistemically relative’. The postulate of maximum specificity avoids

the ‘explanatory ambiguity’, i.e. the possibility to give acceptable I-S-explanations

based on true premises for mutually exclusive explananda.

In case one deduces as explanandum a general or a statistical law of lesser

generality than the one(s) in the explanandum one obtains the reduction of a law

or theory in the first case (e.g., explaining the law of free fall by means of the law

of gravitation), and a deductive-statistical or D-S-explanation of a statistical law by

a more comprehensive statistical law in the second.

Originally Hempel claimed the structural identity of explanation and

prediction. Later he had to admit that, although every adequate explanation is

(under pragmatically changed circumstances) also a prediction, not every

adequate prediction yields also an adequate explanation, for symptoms are often

adequate for a prediction, but not for the corresponding explanation. So is, for

example, a sudden fall of the barometer (together with suitable laws) sufficient for

predicting a thunderstorm, but it does not explain it, since the fall of the barometer

is not the cause of the thunderstorm, but rather a symptom of its arrival.

2.2 Unity of Science

Hempel claims the methodological unity of empirical science. With respect

to scientific explanation this amounts to a universality thesis of scientific

explanation: there is no essential difference between explanations in the natural

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sciences and those in psychology, the social sciences, or history. Explanations in

these fields likewise aim at showing that the event in question was to be expected

on the basis of antecedent and boundary conditions and general laws. In history

those general laws are usually taken from psychology, sociology, economics, the

natural sciences etc. Hempel leaves the question open whether genuine historical

laws exist. Normally explanations in history and sociology fail to include an explicit

statement of the laws they presuppose. This failure is due to the fact that those

laws are part of folk psychology and seem to be tacitly taken for granted. Apart

from that it is difficult to formulate in a sufficiently exact way the underlying general

assumptions about e.g. the outbreak and course of revolutions. Furthermore, most

of the regularities in the social sciences are statistical. Therefore one can expect

only explanation sketches in these fields.

The method of empathic understanding that is often claimed to distinguish

the social from the natural sciences is neither sufficient, nor necessary for

explanations in these fields. It is not sufficient, because the individual act of

understanding is only a heuristic device in order to suggest general psychological

hypotheses that might subsequently serve as explanatory principles in the case

under consideration. It is not necessary, because a historian might well be able to

explain the deeds of a paranoiac historic personality by reference to the principles

of abnormal psychology without being able to arrive at an emphatic understanding

of such a personality.

2.3 Concept Formation in Empirical Science

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Hempel’s work on concept formation in empirical science originates in his

early cooperation with Paul Oppenheim and consists basically in the application of

principles of logical empiricism to the formation of scientific concepts. Hempel

distinguishes (a) classificatory: (b) comparative; and (c) quantitative concepts.

These distinctions normally characterize at the same time the historical

development of a science from its initial descriptive ‘natural history’ stages to its

mature theoretical stages. Classification divides a given set or class of objects

(e.g., human beings) into subclasses (e.g., beings that suffer from certain mental

disorders). Each of these subclasses is defined by means of a certain concept

(e.g., schizophrenia) that represents the complex of characteristics essential for

the membership in that subclass. Hempel speaks also of ’classificatory types’. The

elements of these subclasses are those individuals to whom the respective

concept applies (e.g., schizophrenics). The characteristics that form the defining

concept are ascertainable fairly directly by observation. Classificatory concepts as

well as scientific concepts in general have to fulfill two requirements. They have:

(a) to be objective; and (b) to have systematic import. Objectivity is attained first by

using operational criteria and (often only partial) operational definitions in a large

sense that includes observation as operational and second by eliminating criteria

with valuation overtones. Scientific concepts have systematic import if they lend

themselves to the formulation of general laws or theoretical principles. Whereas

classificatory concepts are a yes-or-no affair, i.e., a certain individual belongs to

some subclass or it does not, comparative concepts admit of more or less with

respect to a certain trait (e.g., x is warmer than y with respect to cold-hot)). They

lead to (quasi) linear orderings as soon as one includes the relation of coincidence
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(e.g., x is equally warm as y). Hempel calls the extremes of such orderings

‘ordering types’. The next step would consist in giving these linear orderings a

metric and thus arriving at quantitative concepts (e.g.; temperature).

For Hempel the ‘ideal types’ that have become popular in the social

sciences since Max Weber are neither classificatory nor ordering types. Ideal

types are interpretative or explanatory schemas that contain a set of empirical

generalizations that establish subjectively meaningful connections between

different aspects of some kind of phenomenon, e.g., purely rational economic

behavior, a capitalist society, a religious sect. Accordingly ideal types must rather

be reconstructed not as concepts but as theoretical systems that are intended to

provide explanations and therefore must contain testable hypotheses. Despite

their lack of clarity and precision there thus are also with respect to ideal types no

essential methodological differences between psychology or the social sciences

and the corresponding methods in the natural sciences.

3. Influence, Impact, and Current Significance

Hempel’s ideas constitute the mature form of logico-empiricist thinking. His

work on scientific explanation ‘stands out as the benchmark to which all

subsequent studies of this topic must be referred’ (Salmon 1998, p. vii). His

reconstruction of concept formation in empirical science has become a sort of

standard for objective procedures of concept formation. It has greatly influenced

subsequent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the

American Psychiatric Association (Houts 2001). His later work reflects the

openness of logical empiricism to new developments in the philosophy of science

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(particularly T.S. Kuhn’s work) that put a strong emphasis on the historical and

sociological (‘pragmatic’) factors of the development of science (Wolters 2003).

Bibliography

Fetzer, J. H. (ed.) (2001). The philosophy of Carl G. Hempel: studies in

science, explanation, and rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hempel, C. G. and Oppenheim, P. (1936). Der Typusbegriff im Lichte der
Neuen Logik. Wissenschaftstheoretische Untersuchungen zur
Konstitutionsforschung und Psychologie. Leiden: A. W. Sijthoff
Hempel C. G. (1952). Fundamentals of concept formation in empirical science.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press (= International Encyclopedia of
Unified Science. Vol. II, no. 7)
Hempel C. G. (1965). Aspects of scientific explanation and other essays in the
philosophy of science. New York: The Free Press
Hempel C. G. (1967). Philosophy of natural Science. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall,
Hempel C. G. (1979). Scientific rationality: analytic vs. pragmatic perspectives.
In Geraets T. F. (ed.) Rationality to-day - La rationalité aujourd'hui. pp.
46-66. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press
Hempel C. G. (2000). Selected Philosophical Essays. Jeffrey R. (ed.).
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Houts A. C. (2001). The diagnostic and statistical manual's new white coat and
circularity of plausible dysfunctions: Response to Wakefield. Behaviour
Research and Therapy 38, 315-345
Salmon W. C. (1989). Four decades of scientific explanation. Minneapolis, MN:
University of Minnesota Press
Salmon W. C. (1998). Causality and explanation. Oxford: Oxford University
Press
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Wolters G. (2003) Carl Gustav Hempel - Pragmatic Empiricist. In Parrini P.,

Salmon M. H & Salmon W. C. (eds.), Analytical and continental aspects
of logical empiricism, pp.109-122. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh
Press

Keywords

analytical philosophy
concept formation
classificatory concepts
comparative concepts
quantitative concepts
covering-law model
explication
Hempel-Oppenheim Model
Ideal types
logical empiricism
methodology
prediction, structural identity with explanation
rational reconstruction
scientific explanation
deductive-nomological (D-N) explanation
inductive-statistical (I-S) explanantion
unity of science
Vienna Circle

Abstract
Carl Gustav Hempel was a leading figure of the logico-empiricist
movement, originating in the 20s of the last century in Vienna and Berlin. He is
particularly famous for his work on scientific explanation that led to the ‘Hempel-
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Oppenheim Model’ of scientific explanation and his work on concept formation in

empirical science. Hempel, furthermore, connected his methodological ideas with
the thesis of the unity of science, according to which there holds the same
methodology both in the natural and in the social sciences. In his later work
Hempel opened up to T. S. Kuhn’s historic-pragmatic conception of science.

Cross References
Empiricism, history of
Explanation: Conceptions in the Social Sciences
Ideal Type: Conceptions in the Social Sciences
Idealization
Abstraction and Ideal Types
Kuhn, Thomas S.
Logical Positivism and Logical Empiricism
Mathematical Models in Philosophy of Science

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