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Hempel, Carnap, and the Covering Law Model

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The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism

Part of the book series: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science ((BSPS,volume 273))

Abstract

Carl Gustav Hempel was one of the most influential figures in the development of scientific philosophy in the twentieth century, particularly in the English-speaking world. While he made a variety of contributions to the philosophy of science, he is perhaps most remembered for his careful formulation and detailed elaboration of the “Covering Law model” for scientific explanation. In this essay I consider why the CL model was, and still is, so influential, in spite of the fact that it has been subjected to many criticisms and is usually seen as superseded by alternative models. Answering this question involves a reexamination of Hempel’s relationship to other influential scientific philosophers, especially Rudolf Carnap. It also sheds new light on issues concerning the notions of analysis, explication, and modeling that remain relevant today.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For biographical information, cf. Fetzer (2000b, 2010), Rescher (2005), also Friedman (2000).

  2. 2.

    For overviews of Hempel’s main works, cf. Salmon (2000), Kitcher (2001), Fetzer (2010), and Curd (2012).

  3. 3.

    In Wesley Salmon’s words: “The 1948 Hempel–Oppenheim article marks the division between the pre-history and the history of modern discussions of scientific explanation.” (Salmon 1990, 10)

  4. 4.

    As Salmon later put it: “[T]he Hempel-Oppenheim 1948 article forced scientific explanation onto the attention of a wide class of logicians and philosophers of science. There was an explicit proposal regarding the nature of scientific explanation on the table, and it challenged philosophers to respond either positively or negatively. It elicited alternative analyses. The temptation to say that there is no such a thing as scientific explanation seems to have vanished.” (Salmon 2000, 315)

  5. 5.

    I take the logically based account of scientific laws in the later parts of Hempel and Oppenheim (1948) to be due mostly to Hempel. I will come back to Oppenheim’s role briefly later in this essay.

  6. 6.

    Cf. the discussion of archeology in Salmon (1990), 25–26. Hempel had applications to history in mind from early on; cf. Hempel (1942). Some of its earliest and longest lasting criticisms concern that intended application.

  7. 7.

    Cf. the discussion of the early, internal criticisms of the CL model (by R. Eberle, D. Kaplan, R. Montague, and others) in Salmon (1990), chapter 2.

  8. 8.

    The corresponding counterexamples focused attention on, among others, the necessity of laws, the deductive structure of explanations, and certain explanatorily relevant causal asymmetries not captured by the CL schema. For overviews, cf. Salmon (1990), chapter 2–3, and Fetzer (2000a).

  9. 9.

    Many of the “second-wave” challenges to the CL model concerned the inductive-statistical case. One attempt to improve on Hempel’s position was Salmon’s “statistical-relevance” model, which was subsequently also found wanting. Cf. Salmon (1990), chapter 3 and Fetzer (2000a).

  10. 10.

    Pitt (1988) contains representative texts; cf. also Kitcher and Salmon (1989) and, again, Salmon (1990). For the basic difference between Scriven’s and the other approaches, cf. Reck (2012).

  11. 11.

    An authoritative recent discussion of the topic, as presented by the proponent of a causal account, can be found in Woodward (2003). For a more general overview, see also, e.g., Psillos (2007).

  12. 12.

    The first reaction, or the first kind of alternative, is much more common in the literature on scientific explanation. Even van Fraassen’s pragmatic model can be seen as falling into this first camp. I take Michael Scriven’s approach to be an example of the second kind of response, in the sense that he provided what Peter Strawson would later call a “connective analysis” of the notion of explanation. For further discussion of the latter point, cf. Reck (2012); for another, more recent representative of Scriven’s camp, cf. Wright (2011).

  13. 13.

    Note, moreover, that outside of philosophy something close to the CL model is still often taken for granted when people talk about scientific explanation, especially in the natural sciences.

  14. 14.

    It is worth adding here that Oppenheim didn’t just collaborate with Hempel but with other philosophers as well (including Kurt Grelling, Olaf Helmer, Nicholas Rescher, and Hilary Putnam). And often these collaborations involved working out Oppenheim’s ideas (cf. Rescher 2005).

  15. 15.

    For further forays in that direction, compare the two essays by Nikolay Milkov (Chaps. 1 and 14) in this volume.

  16. 16.

    Hempel started interacting with Kuhn in 1963–1964, when both spent time at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto. Subsequently, they became colleagues at Princeton. Quine’s views were very prominent in the US during the 1960s and later, of course.

  17. 17.

    As Michael Friedman reports, Hempel himself later talked about “his conversion from the point of view of Carnapian ‘explication’ or ‘rational reconstruction’ to the point of view of Kuhnian historical and sociological naturalism as a return to Neurath’s original conception” (Friedman 2000, 45).

  18. 18.

    For a survey of ways in which scientific models are representative, cf. Bailer-Jones (2009), chapter 8.

  19. 19.

    For a few more comments on the meta-theoretic and the normative role of the CL model, cf. Reck (2012). For comparisons of different kinds of models within science (physical, mechanical, set-theoretic, etc.), see again Morgan and Morrison (1999), Bailer-Jones (2009), and the literature referred to in them.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Erich H. Reck

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  1. Universität Paderborn, Warburger Straße 100, Paderborn, 33098, Germany

    Nikolay Milkov

  2. Fak. Kulturwissenschaften, Abt. Philosophie, Universität Paderborn, Warburger Str. 100, Paderborn, 33098, Germany

    Volker Peckhaus

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Reck, E.H. (2013). Hempel, Carnap, and the Covering Law Model. In: Milkov, N., Peckhaus, V. (eds) The Berlin Group and the Philosophy of Logical Empiricism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 273. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5485-0_15

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