Symbolic mathematics refers to manipulation of formulas, rather than arithmetic on numeric values.
Symbolic manipulation is often used in conjunction with ordinary scientific computation as a generator of programs used to actually do the calculations. Symbolic manipulation programs are an important component of scientific and engineering workstations.
> (solvefor '(= v (* v0 (- 1 (exp (- (/ t (* r c))))))) 't) (= T (* (- (LOG (- 1 (/ V V0)))) (* R C)))