Phrases like "Formal Approach" or even "Systematic Approach" are nowadays generally considered synonyms for linguistic or semantic analyses referring to a text within a formal language. I share, at least to a certain degree, the view of J. C. C. McKinsey and P. Suppes that this attitude was "responsible for the lack of substantial progress in the philosophy of science".¹ Indeed, this kind of self-restriction forced philosophers to limit themselves to fictitious examples formalisable in primitive first order languages and to leave examples taken from real science to the historians.