Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons^™

Structures In Real Theory Application: A Study In Feasible Epistemology, Robert H. C. Moir

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis considers the following problem: What methods should the epistemology of science use to gain insight into the structure and behaviour of scientific knowledge and method in actual scientific practice? After arguing that the elucidation of epistemological and methodological phenomena in science requires a method that is rooted in formal methods, I consider two alternative methods for epistemology of science. One approach is the classical approaches of the syntactic and semantic views of theories. I show that typical approaches of this sort are inadequate and inaccurate in their representation of scientific knowledge by showing how they fail to account …