“Mary Hesse’s Early Work on Scientific Language and the Open Texture of Models"

In this chapter, I reconstruct and interpret Mary Hesse’s work on scientific language from 1952–1961. I begin by looking at her criticisms of views that hold theoretical concepts and statements are made meaningful by reduction or translation into phenomenal concepts and statements. The shortcomings Hesse identifies with these views inform her positive account of scientific language, which pays close attention to the ways scientists talk about and use models. I highlight three aspects of Hesse's account: (1) her use of Friedrich Waismann’s notion of open texture; (2) the role she thinks models drawn from more familiar experience play in making theories intelligible; and (3) her claim that the relationship between the theoretical and phenomenal statements of our theories involves interpretation rather than translation. I then offer preliminary remarks about Hesse’s use of history in developing this account. Finally, I close with a very brief suggestion about the continuity between Hesse’s early use of open texture and the later parallels she draws between metaphors and models.