Some Remarks Concerning Indispensability of Mathematics in Science

• Authors: Tomasz Bigaj

Title variants

PL

Kilka uwag w sprawie nezbędności matematyki w nauce

EN

Some Remarks Concerning Indispensability of Mathematics in Science

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

This is an attempt to defend Field's nominalistic program from the criticism raised by K. Wójtowicz in his article. The author argues for the following theses: (a) that Wójtowicz uses the notion of „mathematical theory” broader than Field does it; (b) that he misinterprets the conception of the „abstract counterparts” of nominalistic statements; (c) and that his general evaluation of Field's program is based on too high methodological standards which he applies to the possible nominalistic versions of empirical theories. The second part of this paper contains an attempt to generalize the results of Field's analysis. The following fact is proved: every open sentence expressible in the language of an empirical theory and being empirically contentful is implicitly definable by the set of certain qualitative predicates. In the case of first-order language this result can be strengthened via Beth's definability theorem, to the theorem stating that every open sentence fulfilling conditions formulated above is definable explicitly with the help of certain nominalistic formula. The philosophical significance of this result is that each mathematized empirical theory for which representation theorem is true, can be translated into purely qualitative version.

• Publisher: University of Warsaw, Institute of Philosophy
• Journal: Filozofia Nauki
• Year: 1994
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 3-4
• Pages: 161-173

Dates

published

1994-09-01

Contributors

author

Tomasz Bigaj