I can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that math is invented? Maybe he came up with the symbols of integration and derivation, but these are phenomena, no? We’re just representing it in a “language” that makes sense. I’ve also heard people say that we may need “new math” to discover/explain new phenomena. What does that mean?
Edit: Thank you for all the responses. Making so much more sense now!
In: Mathematics
Like you said, it’s a language that describes phenomena, meaning someone had to invent it.
Somewhere along the line somebody had to invent Arabic numerals, the number zero, negative numbers, and fractions, and so on.
If you go look at the history of math before the invention of modern algebraic notation, people would verbally describe how to solve things with words and it’s really painful. Imagine how you would describe the Pythagoran theorem without equations.
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