Mathematics is a science of hypotheses

CP 3.428 (The Regenerated Logic, 1896): "When the mathematician deals with facts, they become for him mere “hypotheses”; for with their truth he refuses to concern himself. The whole science of mathematics is a science of hypotheses; so that nothing could be more completely abstracted from concrete reality. Philosophy is not quite so abstract. For though it makes no *special* observations, as every other positive science does, yet it does deal with reality. It confines itself, however, to the universal phenomena of experience; and these are, generally speaking, sufficiently revealed in the ordinary observations of every-day life. I would even grant that philosophy, in the strictest sense, confines itself to such observations as *must* be open to every intelligence which can learn from experience. Here and there, however, metaphysics avails itself of one of the grander generalisations of physics, or more often of psychics, not as a governing principle, but as a mere datum for a still more sweeping generalisation. But logic is much more abstract even than metaphysics. For it does not concern itself with any facts not implied in the supposition of an unlimited applicability of language."

Cap tip Gary F.

I think I knew this as a child which is why math did not interest me. A Taurus problem no doubt.

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