Metatheory

See: Metatheorem, Meta-Theory, Theory, Metalogic, Meta.

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References

2009

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metatheory
  • A metatheory or meta-theory is a theory whose subject matter is some other theory. In other words it is a theory about a theory. Statements made in the metatheory about the theory are called metatheorems.
  • According to the systemic TOGA meta-theory, a meta-theory may refer to the specific point of view on a theory and to its subjective meta-properties, but not to its application domain. In the above sense, a theory T of the domain D is a meta-theory if D is a theory or a set of theories. A general theory is not a meta-theory because its domain D are not theories.
  • The following is an example of a meta-theoretical statement: Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time.
    • Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory.
  • Meta-theory belongs to the philosophical specialty of epistemology and metamathematics, as well as being an object of concern to the area in which the individual theory is conceived. An emerging domain of meta-theories is systemics.

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