Justine Mae Neri Math 4

BSAC-1 ACE June 26, 2018

Mathematics: Invented or discovered

“Learning mathematics is about looking at what you thought you understand and

seeing that there’s a deeper mystery there than you realized.”- Dan Finkel. Have you ever

wondered how and why mathematics exists in our world? There were millions of people

had wished to travel back time and permanently erased mathematics from existence. But,

when did Mathematics began and who invented or discovered it, no none can know for

sure. Mathematics isn’t really an invention, it’s really more of a discovery, or is it the other

way around.

There have been numerous times that mathematics is the subject for debate. Is it

discovered or invented by human. To comprehend these people’s interest with this matter,

we have to understand the origins of mathematical reasoning and their relationship with

logic, before we begin hypothesizing the connection between mathematics and nature

itself. According to Babuschkin (2015), although ancient people know the concept of

counting it was only in ancient Greece where Philosophers started concerning themselves

with mathematics as we would define it today. It started with geometry and arithmetic

counting. Rational and Irrational numbers were defined, and geometrical relationships

were discovered. However more importantly there was the pioneering Pythagorean

insistence on mathematical proof- a procedure based entirely on logical reasoning, by

which starting from some postulates. From that certain point in time humans started to

asked more questions that lead them to seek more answers about how mathematics works.

I believe that Mathematics is more of a discovery rather than an invention. It was

discovered in a way that humans to better understand their place on earth.

The concepts of mathematics were always be there waiting to be discovered. Just

like the discovery of the Cartesian plane by the famous Rene Descartes. It has been

rumored that Descartes’ inspiration for the coordinate plane came about because of all the

time he spent in bed. Descartes noticed a fly crawling around on the ceiling. He tried to

think of ways to describe where the fly was located and realized that he could do so by

describing the fly’s position by its distance from each wall. Then he tried to relate the fly’s

position to a point, and, well, one thing lead to another, and voilà! He came up with the

coordinate plane and Cartesian coordinates. See it just a matter of observation and

discovery to came up to something big. In fact, Godfrey Harold Hardy an English

mathematician believed that mathematical reality lies outside us, that our function is to

discover or observe it, and that the theorems which we prove, and which we describe

grandiloquently as our "creations," are simply the notes of our observations.

So in conclusion, I say that math was discovered; because it was always there we

just didn't call it math then until it was clearly defined. Mathematics had to have existed in

order for someone to observe and discover what it is and to know how to do it. Math had to

have been discovered in order for it to exist now and people and the future generation will

know about it