Editing Scientific theory (section)

===Theories as axioms===
The [[logical positivism|logical positivists]] thought of scientific theories as statements in a [[formal language]]. [[First-order logic]] is an example of a formal language. The logical positivists envisaged a similar scientific language. In addition to scientific theories, the language also included observation sentences ("the sun rises in the east"), definitions, and mathematical statements. The phenomena explained by the theories, if they could not be directly observed by the senses (for example, [[atom]]s and [[radio waves]]), were treated as theoretical concepts. In this view, theories function as [[axioms]]: predicted observations are derived from the theories much like [[theorems]] are derived in [[Euclidean geometry]]. However, the predictions are then tested against reality to verify the predictions, and the "axioms" can be revised as a direct result.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}

The phrase "[[received view of theories|the received view of theories]]" is used to describe this approach. Terms commonly associated with it are "[[linguistic]]" (because theories are components of a language) and "[[syntactic]]" (because a language has rules about how symbols can be strung together). Problems in defining this kind of language precisely, e.g., are objects seen in microscopes observed or are they theoretical objects, led to the effective demise of logical positivism in the 1970s.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}}