 (b) Nagel and Schaffner relied on a  syntactic construal of theories,  which assumes that a theory is a set of statements in a formal language, including laws (Kitcher 1984). Yet it has been argued that molecular biology as the reducing theory does not consist of a small body of laws, so that a covering-law model of explanation and reduction is not applicable (Culp and Kitcher 1989, Kitcher 1984, Sarkar 1998). If molecular biology or other biological fields are inadequately represented as consisting of a clearly delineated theory, reconstructed as a set of statements in a formal language, then an account of reduction that presupposes this construal of scientific theories is problematic.