摘要：During the past decade John Beatty, Elizabeth Lloyd and Il have characterized and argued for the acceptance of an alternative to the received view - so named by Hilary Putnam2 - of theory structure in evolutionary biology; The alternative is an application to evolutionary biology of the semantic conception of theories put forward in various ways, and in non-biological contexts, by Joseph" Sneed 3 , Wolfgang Ste~muller4, Frederick Suppe 5 , Patrick Suppes 6 and Bas van Fraassen . In this.paper,·I shall contrast this view with the received view of theory structure and argue that the semantic conception provides a richer, more appropriate and more accurate picture of the structure of evolutionary theory.
