This is a chaser for the [examples of using physical intuition to solve math problems](https://mathoverflow.net/questions/46883/examples-of-using-physical-intuition-to-solve-math-problems) question. 


Physical intuition seems to be used relatively frequently for solving math problems as well as stating new interesting ones. What would be examples of interesting Math questions or frameworks or problem solutions derived from field other than Physics?



Examples of intuition from fields other than Physics to solve math problems
Douglas Zare's comment mentioning linguistics brings to mind the important example of the Chomsky hierarchy. In the 50s, in the field of linguistics, Noam Chomsky introduced the notion of formal grammars and identified certain levels of complexity of formal grammars (regular, context-free, etc, these forming the above-mentioned hierarchy). These ideas then became important (even fundamental) in theoretical computer science as corresponding to hierarchies of formal languages, with associated automata that recognized them (e.g. Turing Machines). So I think this counts as an intuition and a framework from outside of math that came to play an important role within it.


