Measurability, Computability and the Existence of Theoretical Entities

Abstract

In the history of the philosophy of science of our century, few questions have undergone a more profound change than the problem of the relationship between theory and observation. One can perhaps measure the distance that has been travelled if one regards, as the starting point of the debate, the attempt at defining the so-called theoretical entities in terms of directly observable entities, and, as the final point, the current suggestion that experiments and theory represent two different and partially autonomous cultures within the larger discipline of physics (Galison 1987: 255).