There is no doubt that the current young pure mathematicians question the applicability of many abstract theories enjoyed in pure math courses. It gets worse if an instructor is asked the application of a particular theory he tries to prove in the class that he himself does not know how it applies in real life.
Mathematicians now try much to get to the bottom of this inquiry. One has developed a topology on a nation with aim of making a nation a topological space:Article On characterizations of a T r − space: Continuity, Dominatio...
andArticle On a nation as a topological space
. The question that comes in mind is: is it possible to develop a pure math theory that approximates the physical reality as that of espionage, domination, or alliance in a general topology context using Cantor or Zermelo-Frankael Set theory alone?