The received view of theories is a position in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...

that identifies a

scientific theory A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluati ...

with a set of propositions which are considered to be linguistic objects, such as

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...

Frederick Suppe Frederick Suppe (; born 1940 in Los Angeles, California) is a professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He has prominent work in the philosophy of science including much work with the semantic view of theories. Biography S ...

describes the position of the received view by saying that it identifies scientific theories with "axiomatic calculi in which theoretical terms are given a partial observation interpretation by mean of correspondence rules." The received view is generally associated with the logical empiricists. Recently, the received view of theories has been displaced by the

semantic view of theories The semantic view of theories is a position in the philosophy of science that holds that a scientific theory can be identified with a collection of models. The semantic view of theories was originally proposed by Patrick Suppes in “A Comparison ...

as the dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science.

Notes

Metatheory of science Logical positivism {{science-philo-stub