Abstract

In the last few years, interest in the concept of Meta-Empirical theory Assessment (MEA) has sharply increased. In this talk, I address an aspect of the MEA framework that has remained relatively unexplored in the literature and relates to the topic of theory development.

The talk will be divided into three different parts. First, I introduce the MEA formalism and highlight some of the initial motivations behind its development. As I show, providing an account of theory development constituted an important goal of the framework, which has however received relatively little scholarly work.

After that, I take a look at a historical episode that is of particular importance for MEA, namely the development of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Building on previous work, I use this historical process to further emphasise the point that defenders of MEA are under pressure to provide a satisfactory account of theory development.

Finally, in the third and last part of the talk, I discuss some of the strategies that one might follow to accomplish this goal.