Born: 8/7/1906   Died: 11/25/1998

Nelson Goodman was an American philosopher who taught at the University of Pennsylvania and then later at Harvard University. He is most well known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics. He introduced in Fact, Fiction and Forecast a "new riddle of induction". He famoulsy created the concept of the color “grue” in a counterargument to Hempel’s confirmation theory, thereby attempting to reintroduce the difficulty in determining what constitutes lawlike hypotheses and the dilemma that "anything can confirm anything". Goodman gave an account of all our symbolic systems: ordinary language, works of art (Languages of Art), gestures, and so on. For Goodman, art forms are symbolic systems that establish networks of meaning without attempting to represent reality. Goodman also defended a form of extreme nominalism in which things, qualities, and similarities are the products of our habits of speaking, and lack ontological foundation in reality. (Source)