ABSTRACT
By a program for a science I mean a (sometimes vague) description of what its terms hold of, and on which its laws are supposed to operate. In practice, what falls under a program turns, broadly speaking, on a (fairly unified) set of methods available to practitioners, and on certain unities in the domain the science is applied to (which explain why the methods work where they do). Ultimately, however, the possible range of these methods (however refined) is taken to be underwritten by physical fact. Thus, the program of physics is widely believed to be “full coverage,” as Quine puts it – everything is supposed to fall under its sway;1 chemistry studies the composition, structure, properties, and reactions of matter insofar as this turns on what we now know to be electromagnetic forces; organic chemistry studies the compounds of carbon; biology studies living organisms and life processes; etc.2
