What is the being of math in different schools of philosophy?

[Jim_Baur]

There are many different schools of philosophy.

In addition, there are the philosophy of science and math.

What kind of being does math have in the different schools of philosophy?

Or perhaps a better way to ask the question: in the different schools, how do they explain the essence or being of math?

I am here to learn. I am not concern with which one is more accurate or right. I want to here the different ideas.

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I’m not a philosopher, but I love math and I used to teach College Algebra. I used it in my engineering career.

I see math as a way of describing certain concepts and modeling our ideas of reality, so that we can create an abstract model of something we examine and investigate its properties. As long as it’s mathematical and our math is designed right, if it’s a good model the properties of numbers will lead us to new discovery about the nature of those things we are analyzing.

As an engineer, I tend toward applied math and create models of things, and not so much pure math which concerns itself with discovery of truth about the way our man-made number system works. I don’t need to know or have expertise in discovering “absolute” truth, but I do to have a working model which is close enough I can design things that work with high reliability.

Alan

 

[Just_Lurking]

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (see here) lists several schools of thought: Platonism, Logicism, Intuitionism, Formalism, and Predicativism, among others.

 

[paduard]

I’m not a philosopher, but I love math and I used to teach College Algebra. I used it in my engineering career.

I see math as a way of describing certain concepts and modeling our ideas of reality, so that we can create an abstract model of something we examine and investigate its properties. As long as it’s mathematical and our math is designed right, if it’s a good model the properties of numbers will lead us to new discovery about the nature of those things we are analyzing.

As an engineer, I tend toward applied math and create models of things, and not so much pure math which concerns itself with discovery of truth about the way our man-made number system works. I don’t need to know or have expertise in discovering “absolute” truth, but I do to have a working model which is close enough I can design things that work with high reliability.

Alan

I agree; nicely put in my opinion.

I suppose that regards the essence of being of maths - it is purely imaginative.

 

[Jim_Baur]

I am the OP.
I want to thank you for your ideas and help.

Jim Baur