"The man of true Physical instincts, endowed with the great faculty of scientific imagination, possessed for example by Lord Kelvin in a very remarkable degree, is for ever imagining models which shall enable him... to represent and depict the course of actual physical processes. The possibility and consistency of such models require Mathematical Analysis for their investigation. The Mathematician may also, by tracing the necessary consequences of the postulation of a model of a particular type, formulate crucial tests in accordance with which further experiments will decide whether a... model can be retained at least provisionally, or whether it must be rejected as inadequate... and must give place to some other model..."
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Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist
Mathematics, from the points of view of the Mathematician and of the Physicist: An address delivered to the Mathematical and Physical Society of University College, London by E. W. Hobson, Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., in the University of Cambridge, was published at the University Press, Cambridge in 1912.
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