On Criteria of Meaning Change1

Abstract

THEORIES ARE compared with each other by means of the sentences they contain. In order to compare sentences as to their contradictoriness or consistency, or as to whether one is a logical consequence of another, we cannot rely on the syntactical form of the sentences alone but must have some criterion for judging whether the meanings of their contained symbols are the same or different. In recent years, philosophers of science have been attracted to the view that the meaning of a scientific sentence is a function of sentences with which it has logical connections within a theory, while the meaning of a term is a function of the sentences in which it occurs. This view is