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Mathematical method: does it exist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2016

Tony Gardiner
Tony Gardiner*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT
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Extract

Serious science students and most science teachers are more or less aware of something called ‘scientific method’, and the fact that it depends on a subtle interplay involving mental constructs in the form of ‘theory’, on the basis of which one can make novel ‘predictions’ (as opposed to retrospective ‘explanations’), which can then be corroborated, or refuted, by ‘experiment’. The mental image which people have of this scientific method is often garbled, but the scientific trinity of theory, prediction, and experiment has become a commonplace. (See, for example, [17], especially pages 42–46.)

Type
Research Article
Information
The Mathematical Gazette , Volume 71 , Issue 458 , December 1987 , pp. 265 - 271
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1987

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