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“What's Wrong with the Received View on the Structure of Scientific Theories?”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Frederick Suppe
Frederick Suppe*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Abstract

Achinstein, Putnam, and others have urged the rejection of the received view on theories (which construes theories as axiomatic calculi where theoretical terms are given partial observational interpretations by correspondence rules) because (i) the notion of partial interpretation cannot be given precise formulation, and (ii) the observational-theoretical distinction cannot be drawn satisfactorily. I try to show that these are the wrong reasons for rejecting the received view since (i) is false and it is virtually impossible to demonstrate the truth of (ii). Nonetheless, the received view should be rejected because it obscures a number of epistemologically important features of scientific theorizing. I show this by sketching an alternative analysis which reveals some of these features and gives a more faithful picture of scientific theorizing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 39 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by The Philosophy of Science Association

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References

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