Scientific Laws and Scientific Objects in the ‘Tractatus' 1

in a recent article ² Copi voiced the need for further study of the Tractatus, particularly in reference to the concepts of objects, properties, and relations. Urmson’s book ³ also voices this need and indicates that further study of the Tractatus is indeed helpful and essential to the understanding of the various doctrines associated with those philosophers who were generally grouped together under the name of Logical Positivism. There is one doctrine or theory, generally accepted by those positivists who wrote anything about the matter, which has not, to my knowledge, received sufficient attention and stands in need of a much more thorough analysis than it usually gets. I refer to the theory of scientific laws—and, presumably, the scientific objects whose names occur in such laws—as being logically constructed models, or schemata, which help us to organize and unify our statements about our experience, or which help ‘the investigator to find his way about in reality’. That there is still some confusion concerning the theory is evidenced by Hutten’s recent book ⁴ and Alexander’s review of it. ⁵ 1 think that some of the difficulties of the theory may be cleared away by using the Tractatus as the basic foundation from which the theory is derived. The Tractatus offers the only basis upon which the theory, in any of its previously stated forms, can be made both intelligible and consistent. If scientific laws and scientific objects are to be conceived as logically constructed models, then it is not enough to explain analogically or metaphorically what is meant by calling them such. A derivation from more fundamental principles is also required. Otherwise the theory takes on something of an ad hoc character.