Structuralist Knowledge Representation: Paradigmatic Examples

This volume contains a series of case studies in the application of the structuralist theory of empirical science. The examples chosen may be regarded as paradigmatic in a twofold sense: on a theoretical level, each one of them plays a quite central role as a "classical case" in the discipline or research area to which it belongs; secondly, each is paradigmatic in a metatheoretical sense too, since it shows in a particularly perspicuous way how the structuralist representation program can be successfully applied to concrete scientific theories. The range of disciplines dealt with here is quite wide: from the foundational and normative sciences through the social and life sciences to chemistry and physics. Concretely, thirteen case studies of application of structuralism have been provided: fundamental measurement theory (by José A. Díez), game theory (by Adolfo Garcia de la Sienra and Pedro Reyes), probability theory (by Hans-Jakob Burscheid and Horst Struve), accounting theory (by Wolfgang Balzer and Richard Mattessich), Marxian economics (by Werner Diederich), neo-classical economics (by Bert Hamminga and Wolfgang Balzer), socio-psychological balance theories (by Klaus Manhart), cognitive dissonance theory (by Rainer Westermann), emotion theory (by Rainer Reisenzein), classical genetics (by Pablo Lorenzano), the periodic table of chemical elements (by Hinne Hettema and Theo Kuipers), classical thermodynamics (by C. Ulises Moulines) and classical electrodynamics (by Thomas Bartelborth). These are certainly not the only examples of concrete theories that have been represented in structuralist terms. The specialized structuralist literature of the last decades, as compared with other metatheoretical approaches, offers an unrivalled number of applications of the program. But, as pointed out above, the examples laid out here seem to us to be quite paradigmatic in the sense explained. Moreover, all of them have been especially prepared for this volume, taking also didactic considerations into account.