Blackwell Reference Online

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Nelson Goodman, distinguished American philosopher, was born on August 7, 1906 in Somerville, Massachusetts, and died in Needham, Massachusetts on November 25, 1998. He received the Bachelor of Science degree from Harvard University in 1928 and the Ph.D. from Harvard in 1941. From 1929 to 1940 he operated an art gallery in Boston; throughout his life, he was a collector of ancient and modern art. From 1942 to 1945 he served in the United States Army. Thereafter, he taught for one year at Tufts University before his appointment to the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as associate professor from 1946 to 1951, and then as professor from 1951 to 1964. From 1964 to 1967 he was the Harry Austryn Wolfson Professor of Philosophy at Brandeis University. From 1968 to 1977, he was professor of philosophy at Harvard University. Goodman's contributions to philosophy are wide-ranging, penetrating, and fundamental. The areas in which he worked include epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, analysis of simplicity, theory of symbols, aesthetics, and metaphysics. His work is characterized by unusual originality, typically rejecting conventional approaches in order to reconceive the problems to be addressed and then proposing provocative solutions to them. Thus, for example, he recasts the traditional problem of induction so as to require codification, ... log in or subscribe to read full text