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
Math is a language that we can use to articulate ideas, and its specialty is logical arguments, and procedures, concerning numbers and functions.
Newton and Leibniz were the first to use math-language to describe how we could solve problems via calculus. You could argue that those concepts always existed, but its very, very possible that no earthly mind had ever had those thoughts before, so if you’re the first to ever express them, we usually credit you with “inventing that math”.
<opinion>It’s a stretch to say that every possible story, poem, computer program, article and mathematical structure already exists and they’re just floating in the ether, waiting to be noticed; ideas are ‘software’ that don’t meaningfully exist unless they have hardware to run on (or at the bare minimum, be stored in), and they take a very important step toward becoming ‘real’ the first time the meat-computer in somebody’s head runs them. You discover/invent an idea if you’re the first to ever think it. Ideas are not in the same class as e.g. mountains, which exist whether or not anyone’s seen them.</opinion>
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