Towards a General Semantics of Empirical Theories

Abstract

The printed version of this paper differs only slightly from the original one. In particular I decided to keep unchanged the rather loose and informal language of the version prepared for the purpose of oral presentation. This less rigorous way of dealing with the issues touched upon here seems to possess a valuable advantage: it allows one to expose the main ideas in a more straightforward and easy way. Though some parts of the paper do not match the standard of full preciseness, still I hope that the more important points are discussed accurately enough for the reader familiar with basic logical techniques to understand them correctly and, eventually, couch them in precise terms.