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|Formulated Year=2015
|Author=Hakob Barseghyan,
|Prehistory=Prehistory hereIn modern times philosophers have held a variety of views about how best to express the structure and content of scientific theories [[CiteRef::Winther (2015)]]. ===Syntactical view=== The syntactical view holds that the structure of a scientific theory can be captured by an axiomatized system of sentences. It is expressed in a metamathematical language that included predicate logic, set theory, and model theory [[CiteRef::Winther (2015)]]. The syntactical view was a product of logical empiricism, and Rudolf Carnap, Hans Reichenbach, Otto Neurath, Carl Hempel, and Herbert Feigl all contributed to it. But the logical empiricist answer to the question of the structure of scientific theories was a family of related ideas rather than a single approach [[CiteRef::Mormann (2008)]]. The view was so widely accepted in the early twentieth century that it is sometimes referred to as the received view [[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]].===Semantic view===The semantic view holds that the structure of a scientific theory can be expressed as a set of mathematical models, as models were defined by Alfred Tarski. It rejects the metamathematical language of the syntactic view [[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]], [[CiteRef::Winther (2015)]]. Some important models in science include the bag model of quark confinement, the hard ball model of a gas, the Bohr model of the atom, the Gauss chain model of a polymer, the Lorentz model of the atmosphere, and the double helix model of DNA [[CiteRef::Frigg (2006)]]. Major proponents of the semantic view include John Von Neumann, who wrote on the subject in the thirties, Fredrick Suppe, and Bas Van Fraassen [[CiteRef::Winther (2015)]]. The semantic view emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s and became the dominant view in subsequent decades. John Ladyman used it in his formulation of structural realism in physics. The semantic view has played a major role in the philosophy of biology and psychology in recent decades [[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]].===Pragmatic view===The pragmatic view rejects a purely formal characterization of scientific theories entirely, and supposes that a theory necessarily consists of sentences, models, problems, standards, skills, practices, including such things as analogies, metaphors, and natural kinds, with its full characterization necessarily including elements that cannot be formalized (Mormann, 2008, Winther, 2015). Proponents of the pragmatic view include Nancy Cartwright, Ian Hacking, Phillip Kitcher, and Helen Longino.
|History=The original definition of the term was proposed by Barseghyan in 2015. It defined ''theory'' as any set of propositions that attempt to describe something.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]] As such, this definition excluded normative propositions. It was eventually replaced by the definition suggested by Sebastien in 2016.
|Current View=Currently, ''theory'' is defined as a set of propositions that attempt to describe or prescribe something. Theories can be descriptive (e.g. natural, social, and formal science) or normative (e.g. methodology, ethics, and axiology)[[CiteRef::Sebastien (2016)]]. They may be empirical or formal. They may have different levels of complexity and elaboration; they may consist of thousands of interconnected propositions or, in an extreme, of one single proposition. Examples include Einstein's theory of general relativity, the standard model in particle physics, or the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 3]]
