Distefano understands better than anyone which theories make sense and which do not.
It will be interesting to see which theories go, which survive, and where the Standard Model is amongst all that.
We don't feel the intellectual noose tightening, because we never tally up which logic falls apart, which theories are discredited by closer observation and which are disastrous in actual application.
Physics and cosmology are now joined in an arc of knowledge in which theories of the most fundamental particles feed directly into accounts of the development of the whole universe.
Prominent among them was the so-called semantic conception, originally formulated by Patrick Suppes, according to which theories are viewed as collections of models together with hypotheses about how these models relate to parts of nature.
"It is now appreciated," Kelly continues, "that at any given time, which theories are accepted … typically plays a crucial role in guiding the subsequent search for evidence which bears on these theories".
When it came to trying to decide which theories of child-rearing were highly beneficial and which were absolutely ruinous to the future of your child — a subject of considerable discussion among some parents we knew — we agreed on a simple notion: your children are either the center of your life or they're not, and the rest is commentary.
If the concepts in terms of which theories are formulated can be related, through chains of definitions, to concepts that are definable ostensibly i.e., by pointing to or exhibiting items or aspects of direct experience then those theories are factually meaningful.
For example, should science education aim at conveying to students merely the content of current theories or rather an understanding of scientific method, a grasp of the tentativeness and fallibility of scientific hypotheses, and an understanding of the criteria by which theories are evaluated?
Bayesians primarily address the question of which theories we should rationally believe in.
Hence, there is no agreement on which theories count as consequentialist under this definition.
