The unreasonable effectiveness. The philosophical problem of the applicability of mathematics (Q2926201)

The author offers a concise introduction to the problem of the applicability of mathematics. He first notes that it has been neglected during the first half of the 20th century. Next, he presents Wigner's puzzle (and later its stronger version in [\textit{M. Steiner}, The applicability of mathematics as a philosophical problem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (1998; Zbl 0945.00003)]) and notices that neither realists (such as Quine and Putnam) nor anti-realists (such as Field) resolve the puzzle. He then sketches an approach to the applicability of mathematics to physics, based on relaxing the miracular nature of Wigner's miracle by taking into consideration ``the amount of work that physicist has to do in order to make a physical concept compatible with the mathematical apparatus that she is going to apply.''