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

In the same way that nobody really creates anything – a statue carved from rock is already inside the rock waiting to be carved, the sculptor creates the form from the stone. Similarly Newton may not have created the concepts he described, but he gave them form in the minds of people.

Like Michaelangelo crafting David from the rock, Newton crafted calculus from the universe.

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