How to Nominalize Formalism

Formalism shares with nominalism a distaste for abstracta. But an honest exposition of the former position risks introducing abstracta as the stuff of syntax. This article describes the dangers, and offers a new escape route from platonism for the formalist. It is explained how the needed role of derivations in mathematical practice can be explained, not by a commitment to the derivations themselves, but by the commitment of the mathematician to a practice which is in accord with a theory of derivations.