legal responsibility for the information which this document contains or the use to which this information is subsequently put. Although every step is taken to ensure that the information is as accurate as possible, it is understood that this material is supplied on the basis that there is no legal responsibility for these materials or resulting from the use to which these can or may be put. Note: the telephone and fax numbers given in this guide for addresses outside the United Kingdom are those to be used if you are in that country. If you are telephoning or faxing from another country, we suggest you contact your local telecommunications provider for details of the country code and area code that you should use. Main contents

I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. Bertrand Russell, Autobiography, vol. 1, Prologue. The Quine/Putnam indispensability argument is regarded by many as the chief argument for the existence of platonic objects. We argue that this argument cannot establish what its proponents intend. The form of our argument is simple. Suppose indispensability to science is the only good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects. Either the dispensability of mathematical objects to science can be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of platonic objects, or their dispensability cannot be demonstrated and, hence, there is no good reason for believing in the existence of mathematical objects which are genuinely platonic. Therefore, indispensability, whether true or false, does not support platonism. Mathematical platonists claim that at least some of the objects