Abstract

My argument owes much to two contemporary philosophical scholars of the development of modern physics beginning with Newton and extending through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: George Smith and Howard Stein. From the former I take a conception of theory-mediated measurement, from the latter a conception of abstract structures in the phenomena. The relevant notion of phenomena, as we shall see, is closely related to Newtonian scientific methodology, a methodology that is clearly embraced by both philosophers. The conception of abstract structures, however, is not so clear, and it is especially to be distinguished from the more recent conception of “structural realism.”