Semantical Essays

Perplexities concerning Scientific Theories persist because the usual 'singled valued' philosophical analyses cannot do justice to the proble- matic features of so complex a semantical entity. The components of theories are like law statements, and like models and hypotheses, being conceptual entities which are used in a variety of ways - not all ofthese being always compatible with the others. Thus many physicists characterize the classical laws of motion, as if they functioned in a definitional way.! But sometimes these laws seem remarkably empirica1. 2 Others characterize such laws as 'conventional'; they shape entire disciplines much as the rules shape the game of chess. 3 Law statements are not exclusively any one of these - definitions, factual claims or conventions. They are all these things.