The Natural History of Nonsense

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946. Stated First edition. Hardcover. Near Fine/good. Stated first edition, 1946, hardcover, octavo, 275pp., not illustrated. Book near fine with some light sun to bottom of spine and tops of boards, binding tight, text clean, unmarked and age-toned. Signature of Carl Gustav Hempel to front flyleaf. DJ good with bottom inch of spine missing, edge wear that includes some closed and open tears and their related creases, rubbing, spine hinges brittle and cracking at rear, pencil marks to front flap. Carl Gustav Hempel (affectionately known as "Peter" by friends and family) was a major twentieth-century philosopher, most notably in the field of logical empiricism. He is especially well-known for his articulation of the Deductive-nomological model of scientific explanation, which was considered the "standard model" of scientific explanation during the 1950s and 1960s. He is also known for the Raven paradox, which highlights the problem of induction. Hempel was involved in the Berlin Circle (and consequently the Vienna Circle) of philosophers (David Hilbert, Richard Von Mises, Rudolph Carnap, Otto Neurath, Hans Reichenbach, Kurt Grelling) before fleeing to the US in the 1930s where he taught at the University of Chicago, City College of New York, Yale, Princeton, and finally the University of Pittsburgh.