Quote:
Originally Posted by shakran
By the same token, no one invented mathematics - it's a bunch of laws of nature expressed with numbers.
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I think its fair to say that parts of math are invention. For example, Newton invented calculus. He came up with the concept of a limit, and of infintesimals (even though we don't use that concept anymore), and of a derivative. But he discovered the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (the integral of a function is equal to its antiderivative). It was a discovery because it followed logically from the concepts he came up with, but he didn't know it when he came up with those concepts. It was all formed and waiting for him to find.