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 effectively just a language used to record, quantify, understand and communicate about natural phenomena. These events happen regardless of whether anyone is there to witness or record it. Newton just helped to plot out the dialect we use to understand these things. Saying he invented calculus is a bit of an over-simplification, I think.
Mathematics is language to describe relationships. Humans observed the universe, recognized patterns, and invented language to describe those.
Rather than invented think of it more like a discovery. Newton was the first one to discover the mathematical relationships that can be described by the formulas and terms used in Calculus. Before Newton had thought about this nobody knew the things he discovered or the formulas he created. But the universe still existed and numbers fundamentally still worked the same way before he was around he was just the first to work this out.
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