This article has five parts. The first part will be devoted to the definition of scientific theory and its importance in science and philosophy of science. In the second part, after offering some examples from different sciences, the differences between scientific laws and scientific theories will be examined.
Logical positivists believed that scientific theories are linguistic entities. In part three, a review of their opinions on the structure of scientific theories, which is called “the classical view,” will be offered. After a brief review of realism and instrumentalism in the classical view in the forth part, some of the most famous criticism of the classical view will be listed in the last part.
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