Nelson Goodman

Life and Academic Career

Nelson Goodman (1906–1998) was an American philosopher whose work exerted lasting influence on analytic philosophy, especially in epistemology, philosophy of science, and aesthetics. Born in Somerville, Massachusetts, he studied at Harvard University, earning his undergraduate degree in 1928 and his PhD in philosophy in 1941. Before completing his doctorate, Goodman ran an art gallery in Boston, an experience that deeply informed his later reflections on art, representation, and symbolism.

Goodman’s early philosophical work was shaped by the American logical empiricist milieu and collaborations with figures such as W. V. O. Quine. He taught at Tufts University, the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, and, most prominently, at Harvard, where he became a central figure in mid‑20th‑century analytic philosophy. His major works include Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (1955), Languages of Art (1968), and Ways of Worldmaking (1978).

In addition to his academic posts, Goodman was active in arts education. He helped found the Harvard Project Zero in 1967, dedicated to research on arts education and cognition. This work reflected his conviction that understanding artistic symbol systems is as philosophically serious as understanding scientific theories. Goodman remained intellectually active into his later years and died in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1998.

The New Riddle of Induction

Goodman’s most widely discussed contribution is the “new riddle of induction”, presented in Fact, Fiction, and Forecast. He sought to refine and extend earlier worries about induction, notably those raised by David Hume, by focusing on the projectibility of predicates—roughly, which terms can legitimately be used in inductive generalizations.

To illustrate the problem, Goodman introduced the now-famous predicate “grue.” An object is defined as “grue” if it is observed before a certain future time t and is green, or if it is first observed after t and is blue. Up to time t, all emeralds we have seen are both green and grue. From the same set of past observations, we can formulate two rival inductive hypotheses:

• All emeralds are green.
• All emeralds are grue.

Both hypotheses are equally compatible with the observed evidence, yet they diverge in their future projections: after time t, the “green” hypothesis predicts that emeralds remain green, whereas the “grue” hypothesis predicts they will be blue. This raises the question: why is “green” a projectible predicate—one we take as a basis for legitimate induction—while “grue” is not, given that both have fit the evidence so far?

Goodman argued that appealing merely to the syntactic form of hypotheses or to their past success is insufficient. Instead, the crucial notion is entrenchment: predicates become projectible because they are well-entrenched in our linguistic and scientific practices, having been habitually employed in successful generalizations. On this view, inductive justification is not grounded in a logical guarantee or in some purely empirical “given,” but in the ongoing, historically shaped practice of using certain predicates in our conceptual schemes.

Proponents of Goodman’s approach see it as capturing the practice-laden character of science and challenging simplistic views of inductive rationality. Critics contend that entrenchment risks circularity—explaining what we may legitimately project by appeal to what we in fact project—and debate whether Goodman’s approach underestimates the role of underlying causal or natural-kind structures in the world.

Nominalism, Worldmaking, and Symbol Systems

Another central strand in Goodman’s philosophy is his nominalism—the denial of abstract entities such as universals or sets as basic constituents of reality. In earlier work with Quine, Goodman argued that a respectable ontology should admit only individuals, not abstract classes or properties. This position informed his later reflections on how we construct and describe “worlds.”

In Ways of Worldmaking, Goodman developed a distinctive constructivist outlook. Rather than treating there as being a single, uniquely correct description of “the world,” he claimed that we can speak meaningfully of multiple worlds, each constituted by systems of symbols, classifications, and practices. Different scientific theories, artistic styles, or cultural schemes do not merely offer alternative perspectives on a fixed, independent world; they participate in “worldmaking” by organizing experience through diverse symbol systems.

Central to this view is his theory of symbol systems and versions. A “world-version” is a systematic way of representing, classifying, and inferring—whether in mathematics, physics, cartography, or art. Goodman argued that assessment of such versions relies on standards internal to practice: coherence, usefulness, and fit with entrenched systems, rather than correspondence to a pre‑described, theory‑neutral reality.

Some commentators interpret Goodman as endorsing a form of irrealism—the thesis that there is no single, fully determinate world independent of symbolic construction. Others read him more cautiously as emphasizing the plurality of correct descriptions without denying an external constraint. Debate continues over whether Goodman’s position is best understood as radical anti‑realism, a sophisticated pragmatism, or an epistemic pluralism about description and representation.

Aesthetics and the Arts

Goodman’s work in aesthetics is among the most influential in 20th‑century philosophy of art. In Languages of Art, he proposed that artworks are best understood within a general theory of symbolization, applying tools of analytic philosophy to issues traditionally treated in more literary or historical terms.

He distinguished several key modes of symbolic functioning:

• Denotation: the basic reference relation in which a symbol (such as a portrait) refers to an object (the sitter).
• Exemplification: a symbol’s possession and reference to certain properties—for example, a fabric swatch that both has and exemplifies a particular shade or texture.
• Expression: a complex case in which a work metaphorically exemplifies properties, such as a musical piece that “expresses sadness” without literally being sad.

Goodman also introduced the influential opposition between autographic and allographic arts. In autographic arts, like painting, the authenticity of a work depends on its history of production; mere perfect copies are forgeries. In allographic arts, such as music or literature, works are defined by notational schemes; any correct performance or inscription that complies with the notation counts as an instance of the same work. This distinction helped clarify debates about originality, reproduction, and identity in the arts.

Further, Goodman argued that certain symbol systems, including musical notation, qualify as “notational” only if they meet strict conditions of syntactic and semantic disjointness and differentiation. This rigorous analysis sought to show how artistic representation could be studied with the same conceptual precision as scientific representation.

Supporters of Goodman’s aesthetics regard his work as having decisively integrated the arts into mainstream analytic philosophy by revealing structural parallels between artistic and scientific symbol use. Critics argue that his focus on symbolization underplays aspects of artistic experience such as emotion, historical context, or embodiment, and some question whether all arts can be adequately captured by a language-like model.

Across his diverse projects, Goodman consistently explored how symbols, predicates, and practices shape what we take to be real, knowable, and meaningful—whether in physics or painting. His work remains a touchstone in discussions of induction, realism, representation, and the philosophy of art.