The received view of theories is a position in the

philosophy of science Philosophy of science is the branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. Amongst its central questions are the difference between science and non-science, the reliability of scientific theories, ...

that identifies a scientific theory with a set of propositions which are considered to be linguistic objects, such as

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...

s. Frederick Suppe describes the position of the received view by saying that it identifies scientific theories with "axiomatic calculi in which theoretical terms are given a partial observation interpretation by mean of correspondence rules." The received view is generally associated with the logical empiricists. Recently, the received view of theories has been displaced by the semantic view of theories as the dominant position in theory formulation in the philosophy of science.

Notes

Metatheory of science Logical positivism {{science-philo-stub