Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

With two experiments, we begin an inquiry into theperceived explanatory value of mathematical entities ineveryday explanations. This work is motivated by aphilosophical debate about the role mathematical entitiesplay in explanation. Simply put, are the mathematicalentities themselves explanatory, or is mathematical talkelliptical or shorthand for talk about the physical entities weare concerned with? Across the two experiments, we foundclear evidence that situational factors affected how themathematical entities were considered. However, whenthose situational factors are accounted for, participantstended to see more explanatory value for mathematicalentities that point to other objects involved in the explanationas opposed to mathematical entities that assume theexplanatory role themselves.