A metatheory or meta-theory is a theory whose subject matter is some theory (of the world or methods for accessing the world). All fields of research share some meta-theory, regardless whether this is explicit or correct. Statements made in the meta-theory about the theory are called metatheorems.
The following is an example of a meta-theoretical statement:
| “ | Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis; you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. | ” |
Meta-theoretical investigations are part of philosophy of science or metamathematics. Also a metatheory is an object of concern to the area in which the individual theory is conceived. An emerging domain of meta-theories is systemics.