Goodman, Nelson

Goodman, Nelson, 1906–, American philosopher, b. Somerville, Mass., grad. Harvard (Ph.D. 1941). He taught at Tufts (1945–46), the Univ. of Pennsylvania (1946–64), and Brandeis Univ. (1964–67) before becoming professor of philosophy at Harvard (1967). A proponent of nominalism, he has worked with theories of inductive logic and helped to identify strategic problems in many areas of philosophy. He has argued that philosophy should work to give precise structural descriptions of the world. His work on representationalism has involved analysis of visual arts, musical notation, and maps. His works include The Structure of Appearance (1951), Languages of Art (1968), Problems and Projects (1971), Ways of Worldmaking (1978), Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed. 1983), Of Mind and Other Matters (1984), and, with Catherine Elgin, Reconceptions in Philosophy (1988).

Bibliography

See A. Hausman, Carnap and Goodman (1967); C. Elgin, With Reference to Reference (1983).

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Goodman, Nelson (1906–  ) philosopher; born in Somerville, Mass. After earning a Harvard Ph.D. (1941), he taught at Tufts University (1945–46), the University of Pennsylvania (1946–64), and Brandeis University (1964–77). In 1977 he became an emeritus professor at Harvard. A leading analytic philosopher, he made key contributions to theory of knowledge, psychology, and aesthetics in works that included The Structure of Appearance (1951) and Languages of Art (1968).