The role of mathematical analogies in creating physical theories

摘要

The article presents contemporary "strategies" of creating physics theories being thedriving force of making new discoveries and, generally speaking, of development of physics. With reference to the book of Steiner The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, the author discusses—illustrating with examples—the use of the analogy between mathematical structures of physics formulas in order to get new results, at first without referring to the physical contents of conducted transformations. These deliberations lead to the surprising conclusion that physicists in their work abandon the naturalistic vision, relying more on their imagination and on manipulating formal structures than appealing to observation or experiment. This leads to specific anthropomorphization of methods of discovering laws of physics. It turns out that there exists a cognitive perspective in which physical and mathematical researches are ultimately humanistic.