THE GREAT DEBATE

It's an abstraction, therefore an invention.

You can say two plus two equals four if you like, but you can never have two of anything ... unless you invoke assumptions and abstractions that only exist in the mind.

There are two of a class or type of things. If you're only accepting de-anthropocized inherent qualities of nature you may as well give up now.

Both

Classes are abstractions. They only exist as concepts. Therefore maths is an invention.

Why should we "give up now," user?

Do you think if we hit a reset button on the world, that all the Mathematical concepts and knowledge we gained will be rediscovered? It will.

That the language employed, which really only amounts to nomenclature in this case (in the sense that /reality impresses itself upon us) is invented, has nothing to do with the OP's question, which is the content of mathematics itself, and not "Muh Notation". And the former is strictly discovered, and not invented. Your latter insult is thus stupid and unwarranted, especially since you've fallen into the same hemming-hawing trap that so many others fall into when attempting to seriously hold forth on this topic.

These threads always reveal the same trends: Maybe about 30% of poster correctly identify math as a strict discovery, while the other confused and wrong majority either fall into elementary errors (of which this other post is a classic example), or otherwise into more elaborate errors in order to justify their mistaken views.

When a tree falls in the woods, it makes a sound, regardless of whether any creature is around to hear it. And this because of what a sound actually is. It takes a certain, specific human arrogance, or otherwise thought-experiement, to presume otherwise (as in the case of the "zombie" problems of philosophy). Two and two go on making four regardless of whether any thinking being is around to appreciate it. Plato is actually right here, to his credit. This is not a social construction, and if you somehow think that it is, then it is because you have fallen prey to a mistaken use of language.

It's a language which we invented to describe the world as we discover more and more of it

You are making the exact same mistake as the earlier poster of confusing notation, nomenclature, with language, and again mistaking same for the substance of mathematics itself. Think harder and correct your mistaken view. Listen to me.

Brainlet engineer reporting. Math is humanity's best attempt to model reality, that took us 3000 years to develop and obviously still sucks.

Yes, from doing a million wind tunnel tests and deriving a wind tunnel equation, you eventually get a good understanding of the air pressure on wings during flight, thanks to math.
Then you build a plane and birds make your engines explode. There is no formula for that though.

Don't mistake fraudsters and scammers, who invent a gazillion of formulas, intergrals and metrics because they don't want to leave their uni safe space and face realitys hard truth, with real knowledgable people.

Math is a language humans invented to describe and discover things already existing in reality. The phenomena described by math already existed and are discoveries, the language used to describe those phenomena is an invention.

You're very close, and don't fall into the same confused trap as the others.

The one correction to be made is that math itself is the reality being described.

Clearly discovered. I mean hell, the natural numbers can be generated from the empty set. Also, sometimes numerical properties are the only defining difference. The difference between oxygen and carbon is tge number of protons in the nucleus and introducing bigger and smaller as qualitative properties is only valid because that it is backed up by numbers.

>Maybe about 30% of poster correctly identify math as a strict discovery

omfg -.-' No 30% WRONGLY identify maths as a discovery. Seriously, it's ARBITRARY. Show me a maths book in nature then?

This has got to be bait

This post has to be ironic.

>This post has to be ironic.
only Math dealing with natural numbers are a discovery, everything else is an invention! Negative numbers do NOT make sense in nature. Only useful for inventions we made like debt, etc.

"math isn't about numbers" - Klein Bottle guy

What about math that doesn't describe reality? Because, you know, that's a thing.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes...

No.

There is no such thing as a mathematics which does not describe reality in a meaningful way. I am serious.

p-adic numbers: go.

I'm sure wildberger has some things about the "real" numbers to say to you

Math is shit. Case closed

t. janitor

>! Negative numbers do NOT make sense in nature.
Except without negative numbers we wouldn't have physics or chemistry working out in any way, brainlet

It's an invention in a sense, that we define the axioms. But from them, the intricate consequences are discovered.

mathlet here, what I believe is that we invented the tools (i.e. numbers and operations) but the interactions between them are discovered

What a stupid, unfalsifiable position.

>So there is never 2 or more of anything
Such as the number of neurons in your brain.

...

It is an invention, but it's the greatest invention because it is used to describe the world around us. Almost nothing is achievable without maths

Invention
We invented it to help us
No one ever used math befor man

Man discovered god

Physics is an invention just like neg numbers

>When a tree falls in the woods, it makes a sound, regardless of whether any creature is around to hear it.

Citation?

>negative numbers do NOT make sense in nature

Consevation laws and equilibrium of forces clearly contradict this statement.

When it comes to the product of negative numbers, the natural equivalent is the cross product, which obviously implies vectors, which obviously would not work without direction, which is the root of the "-"-reasoning.

A complete invention.

Only redditors that can't into abstraction will deny.

this

axioms are invention, their logical consequences are discovery

It's shit, you'll die broke like Tartaglia while I make 40k a year and get to look at highschool girls.

A discovery requires a physical object that can be discovered or observed. Therefore math is an invention by the human brain.

this is the only correct answer

So if a child discovers he can walk he has invented walking?

truly an eye opener.

That is a bad example because walking isn´t discovered, it`s learned.

If you want to be pedantic, there is no clear cut between invention and discovery.
Either everything is a discovery, or everything it is an invention.

>0+2017
>believes in god

it's a discovery, because you discover the concept of something. things are never really invented, we never "invented" the car, we discovered the concept of a car

this

except you are a butthurt yuropoor

physics is all dependent on where your force vectors are headed. Also, you cant have negatives in chemistry you dipshit. In theory there are no negative forces that exist in the world. fite me.

all forces are positive you dolt. we only label forces positive and negative based on our coordinate/ axis orientation

>butthurt yuropoor
Rather be poor than stupid.

When I first started to realize that many of our mathematical conventions are arbitrary, that's when I first realized how invented math is. Coordinate transformations and nonintuitive "rules" for different operations demonstrate that there is most certainly an entirely different method for reinventing the wheel, especially if you don't perceive the universe like humans do.

>We invented the hammer but nature did provide elements like iron and copper, therefore we both invented and discovered the hammer.
Why even have words if they can connote one another?

It's a tool, you dolt.

+
=
interesting research topic

you're retarded.
there's math, the inherent structures that compose the universe. then there's math, the language we use to interpret those structures.
the proper analogy would be:
>We invented the hammer but nature did provide the elements of the possibility of the concept of a hammer