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|Prehistory=In modern times philosophers have held a variety of views about how best to express the structure and content of scientific theories .[[CiteRef::Winther (20152016)]].

===Syntactical viewSyntactic View=== The syntactical view holds that the structure of a scientific theory can be captured by an axiomatized system of sentences. It is expressed in a metamathematical language that included predicate logic, set theory, and model theory .[[CiteRef::Winther (20152016)]]. In 1928 [[Rudolf Carnap ]] published his ''The Logical Structure of the World'', which put forward this view, which was central to logical empiricism .[[CiteRef::Andersen and Hepburn (2015)]]. [[Hans Reichenbach]], [[Otto Neurath]], [[Carl Hempel]], and [[Herbert Feigl ]] were also major contributors. The logical empiricist answer to the question of the structure of scientific theories was a family of related ideas rather than a single approach .[[CiteRef::Mormann (2008)]]. The view was so widely accepted in the early twentieth century that it is sometimes referred to as the received view .[[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]]. ===Semantic viewView===The semantic view holds that the structure of a scientific theory can be expressed as a set of mathematical models, as models were defined by [[Alfred Tarski]]. It rejects the metamathematical language of the syntactic view .[[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]] [[CiteRef::Winther (20152016)]]. Some important models in science include the bag model of quark confinement, the hard ball model of a gas, the Bohr model of the atom, the Gauss chain model of a polymer, the Lorentz model of the atmosphere, and the double helix model of DNA .[[CiteRef::Frigg (2006)]]. Major proponents of the semantic view include [[John Von Neumann]], who wrote on the subject in the thirties, [[Fredrick Suppe]], and [[Bas Van Fraassen ]].[[CiteRef::Winther (20152016)]]. The semantic view emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s and became the dominant view in subsequent decades. [[John Ladyman ]] used it in his formulation of structural realism in physics. The semantic view has played a major role in the philosophy of biology and psychology in recent decades .[[CiteRef::Halvorson (2012)]]. ===Pragmatic viewView===The pragmatic view rejects a purely formal characterization of scientific theories entirely, and supposes that a theory necessarily consists of sentences, models, problems, standards, skills, practices, including such things as analogies, metaphors, and natural kinds, with its full characterization necessarily including elements that cannot be formalized .[[CiteRef::Mormann(2008)]] [[CiteRef::Winther (20152016)]]. Proponents of the pragmatic view include [[Nancy Cartwright]], [[Ian Hacking]], Phillip [[Philip Kitcher]], and [[Helen Longino]].|History=[[Theory (Barseghyan-2015)|The original definition ]] of '''theory''' was proposed by Barseghyan in 2015. It defined a theory as any set of propositions that attempt to describe something.[[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)]] As such, this definition excluded normative propositions. It In early 2017, it was eventually replaced by [[Theory (Sebastien-2016)|the definition ]] suggested by Sebastien in 2016.