Are There Genuine Physical Explanations of Mathematical Phenomena?

There are lots of arguments for, or justifications of, mathematical theorems that make use of principles from physics. Do any of these constitute explanations? On the one hand, physical principles do not seem like they should be explanatorily relevant; on the other, some particular examples of physi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Skow, Bradford (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford University Press, 2016-10-20T18:49:22Z.
Subjects:
Online Access:Get fulltext
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520 |a There are lots of arguments for, or justifications of, mathematical theorems that make use of principles from physics. Do any of these constitute explanations? On the one hand, physical principles do not seem like they should be explanatorily relevant; on the other, some particular examples of physical justifications do look explanatory. In this article, I defend the idea that (some) physical justifications can and do explain mathematical facts. 
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