Did mathematics exist before humans "discovered" it?

(edited 5 years ago)

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I dont think it existed before humans cos we invented it for example we go up in tens that's cos we have 10 fingers but it would be better if we went up to 12 or another number which i believe limits us.

Reply 2

Angelo12231

Original post by Shadoo

Maths isn't just numbers...

Reply 3

Shadoo

Original post by Angelo12231

Maths isn't just numbers...

I just used an example what i meant was that it is a concept created by humans which limits us.

Reply 4

Farhan96

Maths permeates the universe... I feel it just took humans time to learn it like it takes time for a child to learn a language.

Reply 5

Liberalists

Maths is merely a medium in which we are able to give structure to theories.

Reply 6

StarvingAutist

Of course it existed - otherwise it wouldn't have been 'discoverable', would it?

Maths is simply pattern recognition. It's silly to question whether maths existed before we knew about it; maths is just our way of learning about the universe. The patterns have always been there.

Of course it did.

Obviously otherwise it wouldn't be able to represent what happens around us..

Reply 9

RunningScotsman

Maths itself is just a way of describing and comparing patterns. The patterns themselves existed, but we were not here to observe them, and we invented mathematical notation to represent them.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 10

Mr M

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Original post by Shadoo

Why 12? Or, if that was just a random example, which number might be less limiting?

Reply 11

Shadoo

Original post by Mr M

Why 12? Or, if that was just a random example, which number might be less limiting?

12 well because it has a true value for example 1/3=0.333333333..... = 10/30 this is because 3 doesnt go into 10 but it goes into 12 also time 60minutes =5*12=1hour 2*12hours= 1 day etc ... You get my point.. Early mathematicians went up to 10 because it was easier to keep track of.

the Babylonians had a base 60 system, which is still with us "60 minutes in an hour" and other systems such as base 12 were also in use. My guess is that the people who invented base 10 probably had the biggest sticks.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 12

user2020user

The very fact that you stated "humans discovered it (maths)" suggests that it existed beforehand!

Reply 13

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Original post by Shadoo

Why does 12 any more 'true' than any other number? Numbers are an abstract invention made by humans, the number 1 doesn't really have much use outside counting things.

Maths however, is the laws that govern the universe. If it didn't exist before we discovered it, then discovering it would make us Gods that are able to make laws that the universe follows, which leads to a contradiction, therefore maths existed before we 'discovered' it. \blacksquare

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Reply 14

orporman

I think maths was invented by humans to make sense of things with quantities, and then once there were quantities of things, people started using these quantities for calculations like adding two quantities together and suchlike. I think there are faults in mathematics, because it is a human construct, not a natural eternally-existing thing. These faults are things like the square root of -1, and calculations that don't have any sort of answer.
I think that when the universe was created, there were definite quantities of things - like stars - but the calculations that people pulled from these quantities as the human mind developed are unnatural.

Reply 15

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Original post by orporman

\sqrt{-1}=i. It may not make sense to you because it isn't a real number, but it definitely has an answer and it has lots of practical uses (for example in electrical engineering) so it can be practically used.

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Reply 16

orporman

Original post by majmuh24

\sqrt{-1}=i

. It may not make sense to you because it isn't a real number, but it definitely has an answer and it has lots of practical uses (for example in electrical engineering) so it can be practically used.

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Yeah I guess so, but you know what I mean :wink:

infinite sums and all those really complex problems with many possible answers or no answer at all.

Reply 17

-Neuro-

I think mathematics is a way of quantifying things that already existed. :beard:

We created a system to discover the world. Numbers like 1,2,3,4,5 are characters to represent abstractions in an easier way, but the fact of the matter is that quantities exist. So in that regard, quantities weren't invented, just more of how we perceive quantities were invented. "Discovered" infers that it was here before us and we stumbled upon it, like dinosaur bones.

Maths started off as an observation. People made the connection between something like 3 cows and 3 days and eventually we probably would have started learning that our observations fell into easy to recognise patterns and there was so much more. In time, we started taking the maths to an abstract level and it got weird and awesome XD So you could also think of it as an act of observation, so it really cannot come before or after it's creation.

Reply 18

ThatPerson

The universe behaves in a certain way, and we invented Maths to describe it. I don't think it's true that we discovered it, rather I think we created it.

As mentioned above, you can't really imagine a complex number, but it exists because we've defined imaginary numbers as such, and it happens to have useful applications.