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philosophers through the sixteenth century, including Galileo (Bertoloni
Meli 2006). Indeed, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and musc already
identified as peculiarly mathematical by Plato (Republic Bk 7; 525a-31d;
1997, 1141-47)were formally and pedagogically grouped together in the
classical "quadrivium." Consequently, the idea that mathematics could be
used to directly represent physical phenomena remained an open and
contested question through the ancient and medieval periods. In the sev-
enteenth century, the main foci of the ongoing debate can be grouped under
three broad conceptual categories: instrumentalism versus realism, types of
mathematization, and social context.

Instrumentalism versus Reosm

Two important sources of skepticism about mathematization can be
traced to the Aristotelian strictures mentioned previously, one metaphysi-
cal and one methodologcal. First, it was claimed that matter did not con-
form to the exactness of mathematics, and second, that the deductive
structure of mathematical demonstration was inadequate to capture the
causal relationships among natural bodies. Henee, outside of the classical
"mixed sciences" of optics, mechanics, and astronomy, the utility of mathe-
matics for understanding nature was severely limited. Based on these con-
cerns, an instrumentalist tradition arse that provided a negative answer to
the question, do mathematical objects and their relationships correspond to
natural objects and their relationships? Instrumentalism regards the math-
ematical component of physical theories, for example, the epicycle-deferent
system of Ptolemaic astronomy, as a mere calculating device for predicting
phenomena (Machamer 1976). And this outlook remained influential
through the beginning of the early modern period. It is expressed in Osian-
der's preface to Copernicus's De Revolutionibus (1543), which stpulates
that since the astronorner "cannot in any way attain to the true causes, he
will adopt whatever suppositions enable the motions to be computed cor-
rectly from the principies of geometry... these hypotheses need not be
true or even probable" (1978, xvi).
Yet, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the mathematical
constructions employed in the new Copernican theory of astronomy began
to be accepted by many as providing knowledge of the actual relationships
arnong celestial bodies. Thus, Kepler and Galileo urged that the aim of as-
tronomy was physical truth, not merely to "save the phenomena" va math-
ematical models (Jardne 1979). And the same realist attitude was extended
to the new mathematical work in optics and mechanics. Besides the increase
specific sci
n successful mathematically based approaches, such as Simn Stevin's work
on statics and Galileo's account of free fall, the main catalyst for the increas- rior Analyt
in a 1638 le
ing popularity of a realist conceptlon of the link between mathematcs and
(AT 2 268),
the physical world was almost certainly the rise of the mechanical concep-
and ethics.
tion of natural philosophy. By proposing that natural phenomena could be
examples o
explained by means of machine models, the mathematical relationshlps that
tools would
characterize the operation and part-whole relationships of the rnodels of-
transform
fered an obvious and intuitive bass for positing those same mathematical
nometric re
relationships n the natural phenomena themselves. The growing apprecia-
Huygens's w
tion of the success of mathematical techniques in explaining natural phe-
change, the
nomena, combined with the rise of the mechanical philosophy and its realist
treatment of
concepton of a hidden world of interacting material particles that have geo-
lenge to the h
rnetrical shapes and volum.es, thus encouraged a realist conception of the
The rapid
relation between mathematics and physical reality. As John Henry put it, the
in mechanic
"Scienc Revolution sa\ the replacement of a predominantly instrumental-
matter how u
ist attitude to scientic analysis with a more realist outlook" (2008, 8). Gali-
in compariso
leo's famous declaration that the book of nature "is written in the language of
roger 2010). S
mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric
plemented b
figures" (1957, 233-39)thus turned Osiander's preface on its head: it was
througiout th
precsely because nature itself was geornetrical that mathematical physics
position betw
had to be true. the analytical
ter of mathen
Types of/Vlathematization
which itself w
Galileo's "book of nature" comment also reveis the type of mathe- geometry, cou
matics that informed much of hs work on natural philosophy: geometry, Defenders of
the same approach used by ancient and medieval natural philosophers n Hobbes and B;
the mixed mathematics tradtion. At the start of the seventeenth century, and to the mar
geometry could thus lay claim as the most important branch of mathe- fenders of the
matics for investigating the physical world, especially given the historical ists,pointedto
precedent of the parallel structure between the synthetic or axiomac con- continuous m.
ception of geometry developed n Euclid's Elements and the deductive instantaneous
methodology of Aristotelian-based Scholastic science. That is to say, axiom- ofthewaydeta
atic geometry derives theorems and other elabrate geometric results frorn the grand narr
a starting point consstng of basic denitions and concepts, and is thus a Wholesale
process that strongly resembles the logical structure of Aristotelian/Scho- matical, specii
lastic science whose explanatory methodology includes basic metaphyscal throughoutthe
postulares"first principies"as premises, and then goes on to produce the aspiration