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
Calculus is a method of describing, calculating and predicting the results of a vast variety of physical and theoretical principles, along with all the associated proofs that that method is accurate.
Isaac “invented” that in thay he developed the methods and proofs and got them publicized. At least heavily from the derivative side Leibniz was the contemporary coming at it from the integral side.
This feels kind of like saying you couldn’t have invented a ruler because everything had a length already. Everything did, but the tools to measure and describe it reliably and with consistency across different observers still needed to be invented.
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