On the “Standard Conception” of Scientific Theories

Abstract

Abstract Theories, it is generally agreed, are the keys to the scientific understanding of empirical phenomena: to claim that a given kind of phenomenon is scientifically understood is tantamount to saying that science can offer a satisfactory theoretical account of it. Theories are normally constructed only when prior research in a given field has yielded a body of knowledge that includes empirical generalizations or putative laws concerning the phenomena under study. A theory then aims at providing a deeper understanding by construing those phenomena as manifestations of certain underlying processes governed by laws which account for the uniformities previously studied, and which, as a rule, yield corrections and refinements of the putative laws by means of which those uniformities had been previously characterized.

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