Full Idea
Game Formalism likens mathematics to chess, where the 'content' of mathematics is exhausted by the rules of operating with its language. ...This, however, leaves the problem of why the mathematical games are so useful to the sciences.
Gist of Idea
Game Formalism is just a matter of rules, like chess - but then why is it useful in science?
Source
Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.2)
Book Reference
Shapiro,Stewart: 'Thinking About Mathematics' [OUP 2000], p.144
A Reaction
This thought pushes us towards structuralism. It could still be a game, but one we learned from observing nature, which plays its own games. Chess is, after all, modelled on warfare.