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1.2
The Structuralist View
The
Structuralist View
on scientific (empirical) theories is an approach to Philos-
ophy of Science that was founded by the mathematician and philosopher Patrick
Suppes (Stanford). It has been elaborated and continued by Joseph D. Sneed, Wolf-
gang Stegmüller, C. Ulises Moulines and Wolfgang Balzer and others. In a certain
way this theory acts as a bridge between Philosophy of science and History of sci-
ence and in this topic it is used to model the “Architecture of Medical Knowledge”.
After the discussions concerning the different views in history of sciences in the
first six decades of the 20th century, in later years we can find two trends in ob-
taining systematic rational reconstructions of empirical theories: Carnap's approach
and Suppes's approach
1
. In both, the first step consists of an axiomatization that
seeks to determine the mathematical structure of the theory in question. However,
whereas in the Carnap approach the theory is axiomatized in a formal language, the
Suppes approach uses informal set theory. Thus, in the Suppes approach, one is
able to axiomatize real physical theories in a precise way without recourse to formal
languages. This approach can be traced back to Suppes' proposal in the 1950s to
include the axiomatization of empirical theories of science in the metamathemat-
ical programme of the French group Bourbaki [1]. In the 1970s, one of Suppes'
Ph D.-students, the US-American physicist Joseph D. Sneed (born 1938), devel-
oped informal semantics meant to include not only mathematical aspects, but also
application subjects of scientific theories in the framework, based on this method.
In [7] he presented the view that all empirical claims of phys- ical theories have the
form “
x
is an
S
”, where “is an
S
” is a set-theoretical predicate (e.g., “
x
is a classical
particle mechanics”). Every physical system that fulfills this predicate is called a
model of the theory. For example, the class
M
of a theory's models is characterized
by empirical laws that consist of conditions governing the connection of the com-
ponents of physical systems. Therefore, we have models of a scientific theory, and
by removing their empirical laws, we get the class
M
p
of so- called potential models
of the theory. Potential models of an empirical theory consist of theoretical terms,
i.e. observables with values that can be measured in accordance with the theory.
This connection between theory and empiricism is the basis of the philosophical
“problem of theoretical terms”. If we remove the theoretical terms of a theory in its
potential models, we get structures that are to be treated on a purely empirical layer;
we call the class
M
pp
of these structures of a scientific theory its “partial potential
models”. Finally, every physical theory has a class
I
of intended systems (or appli-
cations) and, of course, different intended systems of a theory may partially overlap.
This means that there is a class C of constraints that produces cross connections be-
tween the overlapping intended systems. In brief, this structuralist view of scientific
theories regards the core
K
of a theory as a quadruple
K
.
This core can be supplemented by the class
I
of intended applications of the the-
ory
T
=
<
Mp
,
Mpp
,
M
,
C
>
=
<
K
,
I
>
. To make it clear that this concept reflects both sides of scientific
1
These approaches are named after the German-US-American philosopher Rudolf Carnap
(1891- 1970), and the American mathematician and philosopher Patrick Suppes (born
1922).
