more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
We have come to recognise that in a scientific theory even a whole sentence is ordinarily too short a text to serve as an independent vehicle of empirical meaning.
Gist of Idea
In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning
Source
Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.70)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Theories and Things' [Harvard 1981], p.70
| 19046 | Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine] |
| 19047 | Bentham's contextual definitions preserved terms after their denotation became doubtful [Quine] |
| 19048 | Contextual definition shifted the emphasis from words to whole sentences [Quine] |
| 19049 | In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine] |
| 19050 | Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences [Quine] |