“Mathematics — Discovered or Invented?” Language constraint that created a false “paradox”
There is an age-old “unanswered” question about mathematics: Was mathematics discovered or invented? Foreshadowing: I have the answer. Though it is not considered a paradox, it acts like one, because mathematics is obviously both discovered and invented — yet, one cannot be both. This question has been discussed at length by some of the brightest minds in the subject. It is considered a deep philosophical question with multiple interpretations and is central to the philosophy of mathematics. There’s a video clip of mathematician Roger Penrose spending four minutes answering this question in an interview . Another mathematician, Edward Frenkel, spends thirteen minutes on the Lex Fridman podcast discussing this conundrum . There is a five-minute TED-Ed video discussing this. Yet none are able to reach a definitive conclusion — there is no straightforward answer, nor a workaround, nor an explanation of why this question is so difficult. What surprised me is that even bili...