ABSTRACT
From one perspective, theories are the sorts of things that we have beliefs about, that we may believe to be true, for example, or that we accept as empirically adequate. From another, they are related to each other, to models, and of course, to the phenomena. It is from this latter perspective that we consider how the interrelationships between theories contribute to our understanding of scientific progress, for example, or how the relationship between a theory and the phenomena allows us to get a grip on the notion of scientific explanation. In such cases we might get a better understanding of what’s going on if we were to open theories up, as it were, and examine their internal structure, on the grounds that knowing how the various components of a theory fit together might shed some light on these interrelationships. In the following I present two important analyses of the structure of theories, the so-called “syntactic” and “semantic” views. I’ll consider some of the problems with each before critically discussing a kind of “hybrid” position. I conclude by considering the question of whether these analyses can be said to tell us what theories are or are merely different modes of description.
