Abstract

The logical empiricist assumption that scientific thought could be adequately represented by a logical system had the advantage of offering the possibility of precision in the analysis of meaning relationships and patterns of reasoning. More recent studies of science in terms of such concepts as that of "domain", while leading to valuable work, depend on the semantic intuitions of the researcher in the specification of domain boundaries and the relations between methods, concepts, and data within them. This paper suggests the relevance to such issues of an analysis of the "syntax of science" based not on logic but on linguistic structures characteristic of scientific texts, by sketching the principles of such an analysis and the results of its application to the case of immunology