[Alamo-Girl]

Math is just a tool that we use to try and describe reality...

By this statement, perhaps you are revealing yourself to be an Aristotlean with regard to math.

I am a mathematical Platonist like Penrose, Tegmark, Godel, et al. For instance, the mathematician doesn't invent the geometry, he discovers it.

Indeed, I aver that all mathematicians are to some extent Platonist because the variable in each formula testifies to the universality of the expression.

[LeGrande]

“Indeed, I aver that all mathematicians are to some extent Platonist because the variable in each formula testifies to the universality of the expression.”

http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=333

I guess I fall on Bohr’s side : )

[betty boop]

LeGrande: "Math is just a tool that we use to try and describe reality...

Alamo-Girl: By this statement, perhaps you are revealing yourself to be an Aristotlean with regard to math. I am a mathematical Platonist like Penrose, Tegmark, Godel, et al. For instance, the mathematician doesn't invent the geometry, he discovers it.

Count me in as a Platonist too, dearest sister in Christ! For I do disagree with LeGrande here. For two reasons. (1) In the hands of a mathematical formalist, Math is not some passive tool. The mathematical objects selected to express the formalism "shape" any model the formalism constructs. The result may be that the model generated therefrom may not "map to Reality" too well. (2) I believe the foundation of the universe is mathematical or, more precisely, geometrical. The universe is what has evolved from that geometry.

Plato is "alive and well" with us, dearest sister in Christ!