Structure of the Scientific Theories

• Autor(a) principal: Oliveira,Mário J. de
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Revista Brasileira de Ensino de Física (Online)
• Texto Completo: http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1806-11172021000100432
• topic: Rational thinking; structure of theories; physical theory; fundamental laws and primary concepts

A scientific theory consists of a symbolic framework containing laws and concepts that are derived by deductive reasoning from fundamental laws and primitive concepts, and complemented by the correspondence or the relation between the symbolic concepts and the real objects. The symbolic framework is understood as a representation of the real, constructed by our minds like a realistic painting. In accordance with this point of view, scientific laws are not discovered but conceived or created by our minds. We show how this approach is organized by rational thinking, which is understood as an innate ability of the mind that emerges between childhood and adolescence. We also examine with some detail the structure of the past scientific theories, pointing out their postulates, or fundamental laws, and the primitive concepts. We will restrict ourselves to some of the physical theories, starting with those that emerged in the Hellenistic period, and then proceed to examine other theories until the end of the seventeenth century.