Abstract
This closing chapter focuses on mathematical representations and their capacity to say something true about the world in virtue of the existence of abstract mathematical structures. Among philosophers and scientists it is not uncommon to meet an attitude that our best scientific theories should be given a literal interpretation. Such a view can be traced back to Descartes who wanted to establish empirical knowledge on firm and infallible grounds. Abstract mathematical truths are believed to provide us with such grounds. If they represent the most fundamental structure of the world, we can simply read off from our best scientific theories a correct understanding of the physical world. The consequence is that modern physicists and philosophers seriously discuss possible worlds, many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and multiverses based on mathematical principles. Indeed, Descartes offered a very anti-Darwinian approach to epistemology. According to Darwinian epistemologist, however, scientific knowledge is fallible and confined to understanding the information we get from observation and experiments. It is argued that precisely such a Darwinian and pragmatic approach to knowledge is what we meet in Niels Bohr’s so-called Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
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