ABSTRACT
The post-positivist view of theories, hypothetico-deductivism, treated theories in all the sciences as sets of assumed or unproved axioms from which theorems are derived. The axioms, the underived, basic laws in the theory, are usually expressed in terms that make no reference to observations and so cannot be tested directly. However, the logically derived theorems are couched in observational terms that enable scientists to test them directly, and which can be systematically linked to the axioms and through them to the theoretical terms in the axioms, thus giving them meaning. In Chapter 8 we noted several difficulties with this axiomatic approach. One was the difficulty of deriving narrower theories from broader more basic ones, and earlier theories from later, broader and more fundamental ones. Another was the difficulty of providing a satisfactory account of the meaning(fullness) of theoretical terms. Once the empiricist idea that their meaning was given by indirect connection-partial interpretation-to observational terms, the problem of scientific realism becomes a significant one.
