Abstract

In what is known as the “received view” analysis, logical positivism construed scientific theories TC as being axiomatized in first‐order predicate calculus using proper axioms T (the theoretical laws) and having distinct observational and theoretical vocabularies VO and VT which are related to each other via a dictionary of correspondence rules C (see theories). Prior to 1936 the correspondence rules were required to be equivalences between VT terms and simple or complex observational conditions expressible using just VO terms that provided noncreative explicit definitions of the terms (see craig's theorem). The empirical content of the theory TC was identified with the set O of theorems which contained VO but not VT terms.