Is There Any Sort Of General Theory Of Semantic Shift That Has Widespread Acceptance? Like I've Noticed

Is there any sort of general theory of semantic shift that has widespread acceptance? Like I've noticed a lot of words in Ancient Greek philosophy that mean "mind" or "soul" usually meant "life" or breath" originally, technical words in logic or rhetoric often take on more mystical meanings over time, etc.

But is there a widely agreed upon predictive theory of how words typically evolve in meaning that lets us infer their prior (or later) meanings based on current ones? Or is it just descriptive, i.e. we know how these words all changed in similar ways so we put them in the "changed like this" category.

No, there's no such predictive theory. I would classify semantic change in the "very poorly understood" camp. The best we've got is a bunch of terms to describe common sorts of semantic shifts (metanymy, amelioration, etc.).

I say this a lot, but it's also important to remember that theories don't need to be predictive of future facts about the world to be scientific, they merely need to be predictive of future observation. So, e.g., paleontology can't predict what new types of organisms will evolve, but it can make predictive theories about dinosaur anatomy that can be tested against future observation (newly dug up fossils). Likewise, historical linguistics will probably never be able to predict language change, but it can make predictions that can be tested against future observations about language.

But as far as semantic change goes, there isn't even one of those, as far as I know.

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