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Protons Don’t Renormalize
Platonic Scientific Structural Realism and the ‘GeneticKinship’ between Mathematical and Physical Reality
Ian McMurtrieComposed: April 2009Revised: July 2009
 
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Abstract
 This paper addresses the current structural realist debate in thephilosophy of science, structuralism in the philosophy of mathematics,and my arguments for the necessary reintroduction of a Platonicepistemology of science so as to properly undergird the central, butambiguous, notion of 'structure.' This is accomplished by revisitingPlato's understanding of mathematics as presented in his
Timaeus
andnewly interpreted in light of a modern scientific understanding by LucBrison and Walter Meyerstein. Only through an understanding of'Platonic structuralism', and the acceptance of a 'genetic kinship' between mathematical relations and physical relations can structuralscientific realism be sufficiently comprehended and reinforced.
 
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Introduction
The recent philosophical debate surrounding scientific realism has revolved around anunderstanding of
structure
as the primary concept for framing a legitimate ontology.This structuralist turn embraces a mind-independent world devoid of
things
followingfrom the conclusions of our most fundamental physics. The so called ‘furniture of theuniverse’ are no longer understood to be manifest in the microscopic world aspersistent, identifiable objects with their own histories and causal relations as acommonsense understanding of everyday macro-objects suggests. Modern science
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–pronounced by structuralists to be the best and perhaps sole means to track truth –describes unobservable phenomena as consistent mathematical features, but ones thatare ambiguously causal, unidentifiable in any unique sense, and without physicalpersistence. Thus we are metaphysically challenged to confront this objectless,unobservable existence that is astonishingly experimentally confirmed – so much so thatit appears miraculous – yet is radically counterintuitive. Regardless of the nearlyinfinitely precise cohesion between theory and experiment, history has shown that allyet-discovered theories have proved fallible; therefore, we are led to conclude with somemeasure of confidence, that despite their success, our current crop of best theories willlikewise fall away. This hasty outline should serve to descry some of the basic featuresof contemporary structural scientific realism. In short, to accept structural realism in itsmost advanced form is to acknowledge a world without
things
that resolves to primitive
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That is to say, primarily but not exclusively high energy experimental and theoretical physics. This paperwhen speaking of science will have in mind physics at its most basic as the exemplar which is appropriatewhen attempting to conceive an elemental ontology or epistemology.
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