Goodman Nelson (1906–98), American philosopher who made seminal contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. Like Quine, Goodman repudiates analyticity and kindred notions. Goodman’s work can be read as a series of investigations into how to do philosophy without them. A central concern is how symbols structure facts and our understanding of them. The Structure of Appearance (1952) presents Goodman’s constructionalism. Pretheoretical beliefs are vague and mutually inconsistent. By devising an interpreted formal system that derives them from or explicates them in terms of suitable primitives, we bring them into logical contact, eliminate inconsistencies, and disclose unanticipated logical and theoretical connections. Multiple, divergent systems do justice to the same pretheoretical beliefs. All systems satisfying our criteria of adequacy are equally acceptable. Nothing favors any one of them over the others. Ways of Worldmaking (1978) provides a less formal treatment of the same themes. Category schemes dictate criteria of identity for their objects. So mutually irreducible category schemes do not treat of the same things. Since a world consists of the things it comprises, irreducible schemes mark out different worlds. There are, Goodman concludes, many worlds if any. Inasmuch as the categories that define identity conditions on objects are human constructs, we make worlds. Languages of Art (1968) argues that art, like science, makes and reveals worlds. Aesthetics is the branch of epistemology that investigates art’s cognitive functions. Goodman analyzes the syntactic and semantic structures of symbol systems, both literal and figurative, and shows how they advance understanding in art and elsewhere. Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (1954) poses the new riddle of induction. An item is grue if and only if it is examined before future time t and found to be green or is not so examined and is blue. All hitherto examined emeralds are both green and grue. What justifies our expecting future emeralds to be green, not grue? Inductive validity, the riddle demonstrates, depends on the characterization as well as the classification of the evidence class. ‘Green’ is preferable, Goodman maintains, because it is entrenched in inductive practice. This does not guarantee that inferences using ‘green’ will yield truths. Nothing guarantees that. But entrenched predicates are pragmatically advantageous, because they mesh with our habits of thought and other cognitive resources. Goodman’s other works include Problems and Projects (1972), Of Mind and Other Matters (1984), and Reconceptions (1988), written with Catherine Z. Elgin. See also AESTHETICS , ANALYTIC – SYN- THETIC DISTINCTION , GRUE PARADO. C.Z.E.