eli5: What do people mean when they say “Newton invented calculus”?

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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

43 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’ll suggest an analogy:

Multiplication has always worked: if you arrange items into rows and columns and make a rectangle, the length and height of that rectangle always gives you the number items without needing to count them.

But someone had to be the first person to write down times tables for the purpose of automating that multiplication. Times tables let you skip the visualization and counting steps.

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