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Mathematical Platonism is the metaphysical view that (a) there are abstract mathematical objects whose existence is independent of us, and (b) there are true mathematical sentences that provide true descriptions of such objects. The independence of the mathematical objects is such that they are non physical and do not exist in space or time.
In mathematics objects can be defined exactly and logically related, but the object need have no relationship to experimental measurements. In physics, definitions are abstractions or idealizations, approximations adequate when compared to the natural world.
Mathematics addresses only a part of human experience. Much of human experience does not fall under science or mathematics but under the philosophy of value, including ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. To assert that the world can be explained via mathematics amounts to an act of faith. 4. Evolution has primed humans to think ...
Mathematics makes up that part of the human conceptual system that is special in the following way: It is precise, consistent, stable across time and human communities, symbolizable, calculable, generalizable, universally available, consistent within each of its subject matters, and effective as a general tool for description, explanation, and prediction in a vast number of everyday activities ...
"The study of mathematical ideas of a non-literate culture". [7] "The codification which allows a cultural group to describe, manage and understand reality". [8] "Mathematics…is conceived as a cultural product which has developed as a result of various activities". [9] "The study and presentation of mathematical ideas of traditional peoples ...
Contemporary mathematical empiricism, formulated by W. V. O. Quine and Hilary Putnam, is primarily supported by the indispensability argument: mathematics is indispensable to all empirical sciences, and if we want to believe in the reality of the phenomena described by the sciences, we ought also believe in the reality of those entities ...
Inaccurate predictions, rather than being caused by invalid mathematical concepts, imply the need to change the mathematical model used. [103] For example, the perihelion precession of Mercury could only be explained after the emergence of Einstein's general relativity, which replaced Newton's law of gravitation as a better mathematical model ...
Mathematical analysis formally developed in the 17th century during the Scientific Revolution, [3] but many of its ideas can be traced back to earlier mathematicians. Early results in analysis were implicitly present in the early days of ancient Greek mathematics.