Theories and Relations between Theories...

[gusl]

to meet the philosophical needs of scientists...

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-structuralism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physics-interrelate/

now, where did I read that such-a-physical-theory was second-order (in the logic sense) (not that I know what that means)?

Comments

Higher-order logic and science

[fare.livejournal.com]

I don't know where you read that, but I'm interested: that's precisely the kind of thing I was discussing recently about generalizing the punily narrowly valid testability/falsifiability notions of Popper into a framework that would assign for each type of proposition (in the higher-order type-theoretic way) a type-wide testing procedure in terms of propositions of a simpler type.

Thus, you'd have facts, that you check as the facts they are. Then, there would be laws about facts, that you check/falsify the Popper way. Afterwards, there would be laws about first-order laws, that you would check/falsify in a more elaborate way. And so on.

Darwinism is typically checked as a n+1st order hypothesis that allows to produce nth order theories of facts about living beings. etc.

Re: Higher-order logic and science

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I read it on something like "a logical interpretation of quantum mechanics".

Another thing which may be of interest to you.
Jaap Kamps's paper "Formal Theory Building Using Automated Reasoning Tools": http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/cache/papers/cs/16413/http:zSzzSzturing.wins.uva.nlzSz~kampszSzpaperszSzkr98.pdf/kamps98formal.pdf .

Can you explain your assertion about Darwinism with an illustration?