In this connexion, two factors are of equal importance: 1. A theory, in our sense, is in itself independent of any experience. In itself, it says nothing at all about the possibility of its application and relation to empirical data. It includes no existence postulate. It constitutes what has been called a purely deductive system, in the sense that it may be used alone to compute the possibilities that follow from its premisses [...] The first of these factors we shall call the ‘arbitrariness’ of a theory [...].
- Hjelmslev (1961), Pag. 14