"lets go back in time and kill the guy who invented maths"?

Question

this is a cliché used by students to emphasise their hatred of mathematics. I want to prove this wrong for my mathematics/philosphy assignment at school. the motive of going back in time to kill the guy who invented mathematics begs the long asked philosophical question whether mathematics was originally invented or discovered. If i can argue that mathematics was originally discovered, that means that the long used cliché is wrong! but of course, i need to get a discussion going...
what do you think? was mathematics orginally invented or discovered?

“When Newton saw an apple drop from an apple tree he had an epiphany. That epiphany was the concept of gravity. Even though no one before Newton had ever thought of gravity, it had always existed and had always made apples drop from trees. Newton “discovered” and put a name to the concept of an object being pulled towards the earth; he did not “invent” gravity. Just as gravity wasn’t “invented”, math wasn’t “invented”. It was “discovered.””

some people tell you that maths is everywhere in nature...
people who think maths is invented may argue:
"maths is comprised of theorems and numbers. without people, there would be no theorems or numbers to link to nature. For instance the fibonacci numbers, if there were no fibonacci numbers, there would be nothing mathematical about shells!"

PLEASE NOTE, THIS QUESTION IS NOT WHETHER IT IS MORAL OR ETHICAL TO KILL THE GUY, IT IS ABOUT WHETHER MATH IS INVENTED OR DISCOVERED.
thank you.

in what cases is something invented and in what cases is something discovered?

something for you to think about:
remember how teachers tell us that maths exist everywhere in nature?
for example, the shells... they seem to follow the fibonacci sequence. but, IF the fibonacci numbers were not invented, a shell would be a shell... not a tad mathematical... think about it...

Answer 1

maths was not discovered by only one person.it was a discovery of many people from different palces.for example if the decimal system was discovered by a person ,then the 0 system was discovered by some other person from a different place and may be some years after.

Answer 2

Math is a little bit of both. It is an invention because many of the things we use like logarithms are created to fulfill a gap that we could not easily or normally use. It is also a discovery because it springs from the insight of many to see what is already in nature. Take the Fibonacci Sequence, even if it was discovered later than the flower itself, you can see that the patterns used phi. Uhm, I think Da Vinci Code (the book) has taken its toll on me. Oh well. So it must be a discovery that has developed into an invention. It is your take so you be the judge.

Answer 3

Math was invented.
Math does not "exist" in the real world to be discovered.
Godel have proved it once and for all.
The real world does not contain contradictions, every descriptive statement about the real world is either true or false. Not so in math!
In mathematics some statements are NEITHER true nor false!
For example "continuum hypothesis"[1] is impossible to prove and to disprove. Surely, such thing cannot exist in the real world! Only in the world of mathematics which was INVENTED to REPRESENT the world is such a thing possible.
Furthermore, Godel proved that ANY mathematical system that is strong enough to describe natural numbers will contain contradictions.[2] This proved that Math just does not exist in the world in ANY form -- it is a purely human construct.
Of course math is a good TOOL but nothing more.

Answer 4

"Inventions" are nothing more than "discoveries".

Mankind would like to think they are "inventors"/"creators".

Nothing on Earth is "New". The only "Discoveries" are ways to use or combine the things that are already here.

Music, arts, painting may be the only "creations" that can be attributed to man. However, even music may have originated with "song birds". Hmmmm?

As to math, I would think that the earliest fishermen may have competed with one another for the most fish caught, or the largest fish. Mathematics had to come into play, even if there were no formal numbers.

This is little known, but the pilgrims appeared to have little math skills, even though they came from England, where the metric system was already used.
When they began to manufacture shoes, they used "barley corns" as measurement. I spent 17 years in shoe business, had made a presentation of history of shoes.
Pretty crude, huh?

Answer 5

I agree with you that maths is in the nature, and that is really a cliche that the Egypt's or as some other would like to argue the Greeks invented the math, they discovered a part of it and if I may say and not lots of it, but I would suggest to use the first one how could understand or discover small part of a big one and do you think the first human beings how were living together and dividing their share of Apple's or meat or else weren't using the maths? without naming it , or even the animals how sometimes fight for a bigger share of food aren't using the math and think of the animals how are creating very complex buildings like Bee's aren't they using the method that we call maths?

Answer 6

As far as humans are concerned it is discovered. There is the one who invented it. He is my Creator.

Before the discovery of maths by man - the universe was designed on principles based on maths. But the present 1 - 10 based maths must have been discovered by us and its origin may be 1 - 100 or 1 - 1000 or even larger than that. We must have gone to such a small level because of ability of think (Amount of work our active brain cells and undertake. Our active brain cells are near about 10% or even less than that). With a 100% active brain cells we may even be able to own a mathematics system that works on 1 - 1000 or even larger than that.

The only argument you can put up is the theory of universal design calculations what the Creator must have used.

Answer 7

Math is not a unity, some of it is discovered, some is invented. But it can't be known which is which without reference to its applicability.

The history of math/science shows that on several occasions math that was at first 'pure math' (non-applicable math) has later been found to be not only applicable but has led the way to new scientific discoveries. How could this be so if at least some of math was not already 'there' to be discovered?

Further, technology and math go hand-in-hand. Technology is objective knowledge, it works for everyone, no matter what their other beliefs may be. Math does not merely describe technology, its application to technology makes technology precise, makes it work with optimum efficiency. How could this be so if that math was not just as objective as technology?

The objective knowledge that is applied math cannot be constrained by logic. Math is more abstract than logic, and it has been shown that math cannot be reduced to logic.

Answer 8

mathematics is a language and thus it was invented(sorry). it is the most perfect thing mankind has ever created and it rivals anything god ever made.

in english, the word 'sand' describes what a beach is made of. the sand it's self was discovered, but the word was invented. The same in math.

It is the language that describes patterns and change.

we have invented imaginary numbers ( the squareroot of a negative number) they are numbers we use and can write, but can not resolve... tell me where you think an imaginary number was discovered

Have you ever seen fractles, it is absolute poetry
http://community.webshots.com/album/79859222GsOppw
these are the graphs of math equations, but what you can's see on these pictures are that the graphs are infinite. the closer you look, the more patters unfold themselves

the arc of a rainbow can be described by math, the colors of the spectrum can be described by math.

math describes the swirling galaxies and the interaction of electrons as well as the flight of doves

Answer 9

Jehovah's Witnesses have faith that Jesus has already come (he's come into the commencing up of his rulership) a 2d time (a similar way that he left which replaced into invisibly, yet in hassle-free terms those following him ought to tell). Luke 17:26-30 whilst the Son of guy comes, issues would be basically as they have been whilst Noah lived. human beings have been ingesting, eating, and getting married top as much as the day whilst Noah went into the enormous boat. Then the flood got here and drowned each and every physique in the international. whilst Lot lived, human beings have been additionally ingesting and eating. They have been procuring, advertising, planting, and construction. yet on the very day Lot left Sodom, fiery flames poured down from the sky and killed each and every physique. a similar will happen on the day whilst the Son of guy looks. in accordance to bible prophesy and Jesus' warnings, the presence of the son of guy (Jesus), could circulate left out by utilising maximum folk (aside from those paying interest to the indications which "seem" invisible to maximum folk (Matthew 24:7-9; Luke 21:10-12) Jehovah's Witnesses have faith that those are the final days the place Jesus presence is, culminating to a grand climax.

Answer 10

Math is completely arbitrary. Men needed a way to quantify items and later a way to explain and calculate natural phenomenon. As such, they created a set of arbitrary numbers and began to set up rules for working with these numbers. This can be supported in various instances of randomness found in math (there is no logical explanation for any of this): Why does a circle have 360 degrees? Because someone decided it should. Why does one plus one equal two? Without people's explanation of numbers and math it is all completely meaningless and someone could easily say that one and one is eleven because it looks like eleven when two one's are written next to each other.