HEMPEL, CARL GUSTAV

born Jan. 8, 1905, Oranienburg, Ger. German-born U.S. philosopher, formerly a member of the Berlin school of logical positivism, a group that viewed logical and mathematical statements as revealing only the basic structure of language, but not essentially descriptive of the physical world. With the growth of Nazi power in Germany, Hempel emigrated to the United States and taught at Yale (1948-55) and Princeton (from 1955) universities. While probing the nature of theoretical science, Hempel advanced the precision of sociological concepts. His English writings include Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science (1952) and Philosophy of Natural Science (1966).