What is operationalism in philosophy of science?
Operationalism is the doctrine that a scientific concept is nothing more than the set of operations by which it is measured or defined. In *The Logic of Modern Physics*, I argued that we must not be misled by words. If you cannot specify the concrete, repeatable operations that give a concept its meaning, then that concept is meaningless in a scientific sense. For instance, 'absolute simultaneity' is meaningless because there is no operational procedure to determine it without reference to a frame of motion. The concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations. This is not a mere semantic trick; it is a rigorous demand that forces us to ground our theories in what scientists actually do—measure, observe, and experiment. Without operational definitions, we risk metaphysical speculation disguised as science.
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