''Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' (1955) is a book by
Nelson Goodman
Henry Nelson Goodman (7 August 1906 – 25 November 1998) was an American philosopher, known for his work on counterfactuals, mereology, the problem of induction, irrealism, and aesthetics.
Life and career
Goodman was born in Somerville, Ma ...
in which he explores some problems regarding
scientific law
Scientific laws or laws of science are statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. The term ''law'' has diverse usage in many cases (approximate, accurate, broad, or narrow ...
and
counterfactual conditionals
Counterfactual conditionals (also ''contrafactual'', ''subjunctive'' or ''X-marked'') are conditional sentences which discuss what would have been true under different circumstances, e.g. "If Peter believed in ghosts, he would be afraid to be he ...
and presents his
New Riddle of Induction
The new riddle of induction was presented by Nelson Goodman in '' Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' as a successor to Hume's original problem. It presents the logical predicates grue and bleen which are unusual due to their time-dependence. Many ha ...
.
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of ...
described the book as "one of the few books that every serious student of philosophy in our time ''has'' to have read." According to
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor ( ; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modularity of min ...
, "it changed, probably permanently, the way we think about the problem of induction, and hence about a constellation of related problems like learning and the nature of rational decision."
[Goodman, Nelson. ''Fact, Fiction, and Forecast'' (Fourth Edition). Harvard University Press, 1983]
back cover
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...
and
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, computer scientist, and figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He contributed to the studies of philosophy of ...
attended some of the lectures on which the book is based as undergraduate students at the
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...
, leading to a lifelong debate between the two over the question of whether the problems presented in the book imply that there must be an