INTRODUCTION

The orthodox logical empiricist treatment of the relation between scientific theories and observations (as exemplified in the work of Rudolf Carnap, Ernest Nagel, Carl Hempel, and R. B. Braithwaite) abstained as a matter of principle from considerations of empirical psychology. Since psychology is the least developed of the natural sciences, an appeal to it was supposed to subvert the epistemological program of establishing a firm foundation for all the sciences. Furthermore, epistemology was not considered to be in need of the answers to the questions typically investigated by empirical psychology. It is also likely that the abstention of the orthodox logical empiricists from empirical psychology in their treatment of the relation between theories and observations was in large part due to their acceptance of Gottlob Frege's polemic against psychologism in logic, for they regarded the central problem concerning this relation to be one of logic.