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Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics
Structuralism in the Philosophy of Mathematics

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[Revised entry by Erich Reck and Georg Schiemer on March 31, 2025.
Changes to: Main text, Bibliography]
The core idea of structuralism concerning mathematics is that modern mathematical theories, always or in most cases, are meant to characterize abstract structures, instead of referring to more concrete objects, including sets, or providing mere calculating techniques for applications. Thus, arithmetic characterizes the natural number structure, analysis the real number structure, and traditional geometry the structure of Euclidean space. As such, structuralism is a position about the subject matter and content of…

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