more on this theme | more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
What the mathematician labels an 'object' in her discipline, is called 'a place in a structure' by the structuralist.
Gist of Idea
Structuralists call a mathematical 'object' simply a 'place in a structure'
Source
Michèle Friend (Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics [2007], 4.5)
Book Ref
Friend,Michèle: 'Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics' [Acumen 2007], p.97
A Reaction
This is a strategy for dispersing the idea of an object in the world of thought, parallel to attempts to eliminate them from physical ontology (e.g. Idea 614).
Related Idea
Idea 614 Heraclitus said sometimes everything becomes fire [Heraclitus, by Aristotle]