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The Structure of Scientific Theory Change: Models versus Privileged Formulations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

James Mattingly
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Abstract

Two views of scientific theories dominated the philosophy of science during the twentieth century, the syntactic view of the logical empiricists and the semantic view of their successors. I show that neither view is adequate to provide a proper understanding of the connections that exist between theories at different times. I outline a new approach, a hybrid of the two, that provides the right structural connection between earlier and later theories, and that takes due account of the importance of the mathematical models of a theory (the semantic component) and of the various distinct formulations that pick out these models (the syntactic component).

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 72 , Issue 2 , April 2005 , pp. 365 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

This paper has benefited a great deal from many prolonged conversations, but I am especially grateful to Noretta Koertge, Eric Winsberg, and Walter Warwick. Thanks go, as well, to several referees for Philosophy of Science, and to Michael Dickson for many helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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