Science Forums 2

[Edge]

Originally Posted by Pyrotex

This question is easy to answer with a thought experiment.
Pretend that there is another inhabited planet in another galaxy, say that big one in the constellation Andromeda. The people on this planet get tired of making stone arrow points and turn their thoughts to more abstract subjects. Like 'lines' and 'triangles' and 'circles'. A million planetary rotations later, they have 'higher mathematics'.

Now, is it the SAME mathematics that WE have? Ignore the irrelevant details, like we use 'X' but they use '@', we use '=' and they use '}'. Is it the SAME math?

The answer has to be YES. Math will work the same for them. The relationships they discover will be the same relationships we have discovered. The applications of math to the physical world will be the same applications that we have used.

Therefore, mathematics is NOT an 'invented' concept. It is universal, and therefore 'discovered'.

Woa, interesting answer. Well, it seems true, there has been many mathematical languages (mayan, egiptian, etc.) and all of them were not good until the discovery of the zero, negatives, etc...

This can get tricky since math can also have another base other than a decimal one...