semantic conception

Supporters of the “semantic” conception argue that scientific theories are rarely, if ever, hypothetico-deductive throughout, and that in any case the universal laws presupposed by the hypothetico-deductive model are usually lacking. Especially in biology, any attempt to formulate generalities with anything like the necessity required of natural laws…

Starting in the 1960s, philosophers of science explored alternative approaches to scientific theories. Prominent among them was the so-called semantic conception, originally formulated by Patrick Suppes, according to which theories are viewed as collections of models together with hypotheses about how these models…