A match not made in heaven: on the applicability of mathematics in physics

Synthese:1-23 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In his seminal 1960 paper, the physicist Eugene Wigner formulated the question of the applicability of mathematics in physics in a way nobody had before. This formulation has been entirely overlooked due to an exclusive concern with solving Wigner’s problem and explaining the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences, in one way or another. Many have attempted to attribute Wigner’s unjustified conclusion—that mathematics is unreasonably effective in the natural sciences—to his formalist views on mathematics. My goal is to show that this reading misses out on Wigner’s highly original formulation of the problem which is presented throughout his body of work in physics as well as in philosophy. This formulation, as I will show, leads us in a new direction in solving the applicability problem.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

The Applicability of Mathematics.[author unknown] - 2010 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
The applicabilities of mathematics.Mark Steiner - 1995 - Philosophia Mathematica 3 (2):129-156.
How effective indeed is present-day mathematics?Athanassios Tzouvaras - 2006 - Logic and Logical Philosophy 15 (2):131-153.
Mathematics as an Instigator of Scientific Revolutions.Ricardo Karam - 2015 - Science & Education 24 (5-6):495-513.
The application of mathematics to natural science.Mark Steiner - 1989 - Journal of Philosophy 86 (9):449-480.
An introduction to the philosophy of mathematics.Mark Colyvan - 2012 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-08-02

Downloads
94 (#168,322)

6 months
7 (#176,166)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Arezoo Islami
San Francisco State University

References found in this work

Mathematics and Scientific Representation.Christopher Pincock - 2012 - Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press USA.
The unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences.Eugene Wigner - 1960 - Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics 13:1-14.
Science and necessity.John Bigelow & Robert Pargetter - 1990 - New York: Cambridge University Press. Edited by Robert Pargetter.

View all 15 references / Add more references