Mathematics is not the only language in the book of nature

被引：0
|
作者：
James Nguyen
Roman Frigg
机构：
[1] University of Notre Dame,History and Philosophy of Science Program
[2] London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science
[3] London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE),Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method
来源：
Synthese | 2021年 / 198卷
关键词：
Application of mathematics; Structure; Mapping account; Representation; Isomorphism; Physical descriptions;
D O I：
暂无
中图分类号：
学科分类号：
摘要：
How does mathematics apply to something non-mathematical? We distinguish between a general application problem and a special application problem. A critical examination of the answer that structural mapping accounts offer to the former problem leads us to identify a lacuna in these accounts: they have to presuppose that target systems are structured and yet leave this presupposition unexplained. We propose to fill this gap with an account that attributes structures to targets through structure generating descriptions. These descriptions are physical descriptions and so there is no such thing as a solely mathematical account of a target system.
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页码：5941 / 5962
页数：21
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