Most useless post in history but it’s been bugging me for some time. When I hear it’s Maths discovered or invented, it makes me mad. I think it’s both. But for a simple choice of definition.

To me an invention is the discovery of a method, a method to do something. So inventions are by definition a subset of discoveries. End of the post.

Related question, but a bit of a tangent. I saw the empty page and it made me sad. Two for one, you win. Win-win. Some Physicists are surprised by the fact that Maths describes so well nature. But I think it’s not surprising at all. Maths are language, and we use all the time language to describe approximately everything that happens, and very successfully. In the same way, we develop Maths independently from Physics, most of Maths is not useful to describe nature, but some of its words can be used to describe approximately nature. Every Physics model is approximate, it can become very precise, but it’s ultimately incomplete. Also the exact Maths that describe precisely the world take centuries to develop, so it’s not easy to find those words.

I suppose these are the answers of a Physics/Maths trained fella that is also Computational/AI trained. All human knowledge can be seen as an approximate, probabilistic encoding of reality into language.

What do you think? Are Maths discovered or invented? Or both? Or neither? Is the fact that Maths describes nature so well surprising? Please comment below.