How does one “invent new maths”? Like Isaac Newton inventing Calculus, or John Napier logs. How does one answer a mathematical question that’s never been answered?
In: Mathematics
Largely it is about identifying patterns, and connecting what you see to what we already know.
Sometimes what you see doesn’t match up with what you know, so you analyze it. You study it. Sometimes this allows you to extend what we know to include the new information and other times it allows you to create something new that we know.
When we get into the real abstract or theoretical stuff, it may be things we can’t observe. In this case, maybe you ask “what if this changed?” or some similar question, and then you explore how that will connect to what we know.
I know that wasn’t really an ELI5 answer, and was very vague, but it is a difficult concept to explain.
Also, Newton is not the sole inventor of Calculus credit is also due to Gottfried Leibniz who discovered it independently from Newton at around the same time.
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