Eugene Wigner famously argued for the "unreasonable effectiveness of
mathematics" for describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960
essay. That essay has now led to some 55 years of (sometimes anguished) soul
searching --- responses range from "So what? Why do you think we developed
mathematics in the first place?", through to extremely speculative ruminations
on the existence of the universe (multiverse) as a purely mathematical entity
--- the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. In the current essay I will steer an
utterly prosaic middle course: Much of the mathematics we develop is informed
by physics questions we are tying to solve; and those physics questions for
which the most utilitarian mathematics has successfully been developed are
typically those where the best physics progress has been made.Comment: 12 pages. Minor edits on an essay written for the 2015 FQXi essay
contest: "Trick or truth: The mysterious connection between physics and
mathematics
