The physicist who states a law of nature with the aid of a mathematical formula is abstracting a real feature of a real material world, even if he has to speak of numbers, vectors, tensors, state-functions, or whatever to make the abstraction.

— Hilary Putnam, Philosophical Papers Volume 1: Mathematics, Matter, and Method (1975)

From the essay 'What is Mathematical Truth?' in his Philosophical Papers, vol. 1.

Topics: mathematics