ABSTRACT
Incorporation was an important emphasis within logical empiricist philosophy of science. Logical empiricism was the dominant philosophy of science during the period immediately after World War II. Its program was based on the following assumptions about science and its interpretation:
1 The theories, laws and experimental findings of science are (or may be expressed as) declarative sentences;
2 These sentences may be reconstructed in the symbolism of formal logic; 3 The task of philosophy of science is to specify criteria for the evaluation of
laws and theories. Once suitable criteria have been formulated, they may be applied, for instance, to assess the adequacy of proposed explanations, to determine the degree of evidential support provided a law by observational evidence, or to gauge the rationality of theory choice;
4 An important part of the task of formulating an evaluative criterion is to specify an “explication” of the appropriate epistemological term, e.g., “law,” “theory,” “confirmation,” “explanation,” “reduction,” et al. An explication is a logical relationship among sentences.
