Mathematics and the World

Abstract

The author presents Einstein's viewpoint on the issue of the relation between mathematics and the world. Mathematics, as Einstein seems to suggest, cannot model the structure of the world in an absolutely adequate way since, if mathematical theorems are certain, they don't apply to the reality. However from the fact that something cannot be done in an adequate way, it doesn't follow that it can't be done at all. Mathematics can and should be applied to desrcibe the reality, but in such a case its theorems are not certain. Mathematics is a formal science. To be able to state something about the world it must be filled with real meaning - which for Einstein means that mathematical asertions, after a suitable interpretation, must be linked through a network of experimental procedures with the world of nature. Einstein, as it appears, applied these general suggestions to approach the problem of geometry of real space.