ABSTRACT
Theories are constructed through a posteriori rationalization: the inductive method is applied to empirical data in order to arrive at typifications that enable researchers to formulate a discourse addressed to their scientific community. In these cases, rather than models, it is more appropriate to speak of schemata, which are adapted to reflect experience – also, within certain limits, by adapting the structure of the input information – and which, consequently, are by definition immune to experience. The objectivist view, that it has overcome the old positivism’s naïve realism, is more inclined to rationalism: theories are mostly constructed through a-priori reasoning – using deductive logic, in other words – starting from a few basic assumptions that are considered self-evident. When the empirical-realist disciplines adopt an objectivist posture, they consider sense data as a means of supporting or falsifying the hypotheses and models deduced from one or more theories.
