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1. From the serious and important questions which have here been raised, about my views on science, I shall select for answer the one which appears to be crucial to any comparison with the structuralist account of theories. I am happy and grateful to have this opportunity, for the question made me realize that I have been talking about scientific theories in two ways, with insufficient attention to how these two ways can be reconciled. For on the one hand, I speak of theories as saying something about what the world is like; and on the other hand, I say that to present a theory is to present a class of models. How could both be correct? Whatever account we give of scientific theories, a theory must be the sort of thing that can be true or false, i.e., it must make sense to ask if it is true or false. I do not imply that it must be true or false (cf. "The present king of France is bald") nor that truth (of the theory as a whole, in all respects) is an important feature for science. But theories can be doubted or believed, in part or as a whole, and to say that one doubts or believes a theory is to say that one has a certain attitude to the question whether things are really as the theory says they are. All of this makes sense only if a theory is something that could be true or false. Hence even if a theory is always presented by presenting a class of models (structures), we cannot identify the former with the latter, because a class cannot be true or false. Thus the theory must at least include something in addition; e.g, a claim or statement about this class.

On the Question of Identification of a Scientific Theory (A Reply to "Van Fraassen's Concept of Empirical Theory" by Pérez Ransanz)