Abstract
A number of issues connected with the nature of applied mathematics are discussed. Among the claims are these: mathematics "hooks onto" the world by providing models or representations, not by describing the world; classic platonism is to be preferred to structuralism; and several issues in the philosophy of science (reality of spacetime, the quantum state) are intimately connected to the nature of applied mathematics.
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Brown, J.R. What is Applied Mathematics?. Foundations of Science 2, 21–37 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009658723574
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009658723574