First | Prev || Next | Last
¿Question #390?
shotokanguy: Were numbers invented or discovered?

ocdspectrum: Invented.
pricero1: I can remember when people had to work in the number mines.
purplewurple: Numbers are a useful fiction.
oldhoss: Long ago, aliens came to this planet. After a series of anal probings they decided that life on this planet was not ready to receive their infinite greatness and serve as their trust slaves and that we needed more time in the incubator, so to speak. Knowing that it might take millennia for us to advance to an alien acceptable level, they decided to speed up the process by leaving numbers hidden over the earth. Eventually the numebrs were discovered, leading to increased visits and anal probings from the aliens. Good times all around.
Woelf: The concept of quantities were discovered; numerals were invented.
cowboycw: invented and then later discovered
Caerid: Invented?
Jatoha: discovered
kathleenryan: invented
bcooperok: Numerical systems are constructs to represent intuitive sets, but they are wholly man-made. For instance, Inuits had a base 20 counting system, but didn't have written numerals, so what was invented or discovered doesn't really make sense.
bdwhite: conceptualized
ricardofo: In earth
pwilz: Good question. I don't have an answer, but I could probably talk about it for a while.
RedArmyIan: The symbols are invented. The nature of numbers are discovered.
rockin_on05: i guess they would have been invented...
vandemonium: Invented.
Numskull: The quantities themselves were discovered. The characters used to represent them were invented.
cgund: Hm. I would imagine this is known, but not by me.
Songlian: Discovered, clearly
ZeroZilla: Invented. The concepts they represent were discovered, but the numbers themselves are just shorthand symbols, and were therefore invented.
tipigi: discovered
DHEK: Invented, of course.
Benzebub: Discovered.
Onionking: Discovered. The romans and greeks had no zero.
aleo09: good one. too deep for me
Libra: Numbers are *concepts*, not objects; so they were *invented*. To illustrate the absurdity of the question, change "numbers" to "words" — because numbers, like words, are only a form of description.
martybjsg: Invented.
Malkari: More like figured out
duchamp: The principle of dependences etc. discovered, the decimal system and the zero invented. In this system, further dependences were discovered. To describe those dependences and principles a language and symbols were invented ... and so on and so forth. The hen or the egg?
mats-k: Invented. Nothing in nature is arbitrarily large.
Cut & Space: discovered
rawdawg: invented
scriptorum: Invented. Numbers don't exist as a tangile thing. Quantity is a concept invented to help our feeble minds reduce things to simple patterns of identity. It's since become oh so very useful. We've really made great use out of numerical paradigms. Does it sound like I know what I'm talking about, because I'm just BSing.
jace_813: Invented
Dale of the Bow: invented---like religion and government in order to control the masses
Cromaa: Invented, then discovered
waddball: Dude...whoa.
wargamer66: Invented
Avatar_69: Mathematics was discovered, Numbers were invented to make sense of maths
Zen Postman: Wouldn't they have to be invented before they were discovered? So...
Chris Page: Just happened.
agentjonz: invented
KDSN: discovered
keldrak: invented
jasta6: By divine discovery...............................
Platinum Dragon: Invented. They are simply a language we use to describe our world in abstract terms. That or the mystical cow thing...
bigbadsteve: most likely
Karlsen: Numbers were discovered, number systems and naming conventions were invented
chockle: invented
MagBas: Inscovered?
ZombyDawg: developed
javelin98: Discovered.
gamesbook: No.
scubadawg1: Invented
puffinge: yes
Legend Dan: invented.
POvidiusNaso: Invented. Numbers were created to make life easier to categorize.
matthew.marquand: Discovered. You can count on it.
sourwyrm: discovered/labeled
arkibet: invented, I guess. I mean, people discovered they had fingers, but had to come up with some way to count them.
edosan: Discovered.
der_chad: discovered. mathematics is a truth.
heli: discovered
Lord_Prussian: Both
davidme: Invented
wyattnoise: please refer to excerpts from my seminar-on -tape "Language: invented or discovered?"
sdownin: Numerals were invented since they never actually were. The concept of numbers was discovered, since it was already there to begin with.
ssmooth: Like the parts of the body, they were given names.
Gecko23: Invented.
Ardos: discovered
kimapesan: You can't discover something that always existed...
legendno6: Invented
mandj2001: invented
skrutsch: That's an interesting question. I think it's somewhere in between.
JeremyVS: The concept of numbers was discovered, the word associated with a specific number-concept was invented.
WasQ: both at the same time... but the actual numbers are a musulman invention
melissa: Definitely discovered
Tim Synge: Counted.
darthcliff: Invented
AlorielLelyn: I'd have to say, a bit of both. Counting was discovered, but assigning physical representations to those was invented.
DenverWolf: I'd say invented: they are symbols that represent (are assigned to) numbers.
m_r_tyler: Discovered.
EndersGame: Yes, they were.
toulouse: invented
Oborro: theyre comepletly abstract... they were most certainly invented
jpact: Discovered.
gnomehome: It's just a convention, they were agreed upon. Why is a chair called a chair ?
jens_hoppe: Both
fsumarc: Invented before writing. Fertile Crescent Asia. invented to track inventory. See the book "Before Writing".
viogression: Discovered
Blackwind: invented
isolated: 42?
djflippy: Invented
chaddyboy_2000: Discovered.
JoeSteadman: God made them
djlg: Numbers were discovered, but thier NOTATION was invented.
dietevil: Discovered as a means of communicating quantity
raolsson: Invented
tp_ryhansen: Invented because "numbers" are language to describe something.
jaredh: probably discovered, as you can count on the hands God gave you.
Mosse: A man named Grob discovered them under a stone.
Shakar: Invented.
game_boy: Real numbers were discovered, complex numbers were invented
BobDodgerBlue: Discovered
Critical Mass: instinctive
louiseh: Discovered.
seanp: Discovented
netfilterz: invented
TD2008YDS: invented
snoozefest: invented
jttm: Invented
Jim_P: discovered
Draugnar: invented
scribidinus: As I understand it there is no zero symbol in Roman numerals. So I wondered if the answer to a question about a quantity..."How many denarii do you have?" that we would answer "Zero" would be answered, "I must have at least one but I don't know where it is."
CortexBomb: The representations of numbers were invented, quantity exists independently of our understanding of it though
EYE of NiGHT: Invented.
TamiWhitsett: yes
PghArch: Depends on which ones you are talking about.
Krishna: Discovered (though numerals were invented)
dakarp: Time to read up on my Frege
tragicpoet: Invented
Debate: Discovered... although that's about as meaningful as saying that I discovered my toothbrush in the morning
nexttothemoon: Yes.
Friendless: Discovered
Hallow: created
berserkley: discovered
ValJor: Invented
janiera: A number is only a word to describe a quantity... so invented
seppo21: Like all graphical representations of ideas, they were created.
Linnaeus: Invented. A lot of societies make do with one/(few)/many
skelebone: Discovered.
HBGlover: Positive integers were discovered. Everything else was invented.
Flyspeck23: Discovered.
CDRodeffer: Discovered
ensor: Invented.
ejmowrer: Discovered
Spielfreak: invented
ynnen: Numbers were designed to encompass/express the mathematics that were discovered