I have not seen that lovely argument made before. +1

Math was invented Just spend a moment with a search engine to see how many people are discussing whether math was invented or discovered!

As for Is ... applicability of language... theistic explanation You might consider the so-called atheist Nietzsche: You say you dont believe in God yet you believe in grammar?!

@rushi I guess you could say that Newton "discovered" the math, rather than "invented" it. I am not sure they are that different. The reality was always there. Newton contrived/conceived math to describe it.

If you allow the 'discovered' to be at least under consideration, the usual (cosmological etc) arguments just transfer: Who invented the universe? → Who invented the math (Or the laws)? OTOH baldly affirming the invented is just a circular affirmation of the philosophy of empircism

@Rushi if the distinction is thought significant, you might want to keep in mind... Newton was slightly wong. An approximation. Not exact. (damn close, not exact).... if the math were something to be "discovered" in some way that is different from "invented"... wouldn't Newton have had to discover the right math? Not a human made approximation? If the process is "discovery"... how does one "discover" almost right math? So I lean towards... "invented" being more appropriate. But am open to reasons to think otherwise.

So then the question changes to *Where do you apply the word "discover"?

I think that the surprising effectiveness of computers and AI cries out for an explanation too! Why did the universe take so long to manifest something that is so helpful in allowing a few deserving souls to amass untold wealth? Well, time for breakfast.

@Rushi The whole question and all such questions are about people trying to nail their opinions to a big enough tree (or church door or whatever). "I have opinions. Strong opinions. But I don't always agree with them." - George Bush - I think we all need to learn this koan. Didn't Nagarjuna say something like that? Or Ramanujan? Or some arrangement of those letters...

There is no consensus as to whether or not meth was invented or discovered. Using language is a poor analogy since there is nothing in reality that depends on language and there is a consensus for it being invented

Is a consensus for language being invented — You'd be surprised @Baby_philosopher. (a) Sanskrit is the language of the gods and/or the resonance of the anklets of Shiva dancing (b) The Koran may never be translated (One can call it a commentary or exegesis etc) because Arabic has a similar status (c) Much of the mystery of the Talmud is around meditations on the Hebrew alphabet (d) In some of the Buddhist temples the most sacred relic is simply a single letter (Sanskrit/Pali etc) on some super-old material. So I'm guessing the only languages youre familiar with are "secular languages"

@Baby_philosopher The cutest is Maidu

@ScottRowe I guess you're looking for Nagarjuna. But thanks for the GWB-Koan — I think Dubya is Nagarjuna's guru 😆

@Rushi Language was invented by humans. Sure, some religions argue for certain forms of prose being invented by God but of course they’d argue for that: they have an incentive to do so. I’m aware of Qur’anic Arabic argued to be “unique” for example but Arabic existed well before the Qur’aan and not only is the uniqueness argument subjective but uniqueness also does not imply divinity.

@Baby_philosopher Language was invented by humans Were you there when it happened? You are assuming that divine and human are mutually exclusive — Moses was a man who Yahweh gave tablets to, Jesus was a man on whom a dove descended, the Vedic rishis were men who heard the divine hymns without human pollution etc etc. And Einstein a man sho said There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle Somehow ppl (miraculously!!) only hear one side of his choice

Each one to his own mythology @Baby_philosopher! There’s no evidence the supernatural exists. : that's your physicalist mythology — good for you! God bless you 😀!! Do you remember when you came out the womb? — No. How do you know you did? I dont. In fact as a fan of Occam I find it more parsimonious to refuse to affirm/deny things I dont know than to affirm second hand knowledge. See the divergence between gradual vs simultaneous creation

@Rushi If physicalism isn’t true, and there is only the mental, why do you care to live? If you died, the constituents of you would apparently still be conscious, so why do you decide to continue to live? Is it because instinctually, you also affirm physicalism?

@Baby_philosopher If physicalism isnt true.. You are pushing your dichotomies onto me. I said its a mythology. I didnt say mythologies are (necessarily) untrue. There is only the mental Its more accurate to say The mental or rather consciousness supervenes over everything -- May I suggest a medical dose of Kant? Decide to continue to live Typical Cartesian BS. I find myself living. Then I decide or otherwise. Unlike Descartes absurdity: I think therefore I am.

@Rushi A myth implies falsehood. There is nothing to suggest physical reality is false.

It's not clear that "the applicability of natural languages to 'describe' aspects of nature" in such a weak sense is comparable to "the applicability of mathematics in reliably modelling and predicting (certain) aspects of nature"

@Rushi some people majored in mythology: they think they are their own god.

By the way, I just realized I misspelled it as meth. There is consensus that meth was invented!

Ultimately, math is a constructed language with its roots in formal logic. In most cases, discovery versus invention is a distinction without a difference. Or, in other words, invention is the discovery of a successful novel arrangement of preexisting material in a given set of rules described by observations of how the rules match reality. Add to that, information is energy. If the inverse is established true, then the 1st law of thermodynamics imply we invent nothing, and can only discover. This would suggest any true invention to be divine or supernatural in origin.

Non-philosopher here, but to me this doesn't seem to address the fact that we have natural numbers that seem impossible to not invent. You start with a single base number and take multiples from there. That seems disconnected from the scaling powers of physical laws: $\propto \frac{1}{r^{1}}$, $\propto \frac{1}{r^{2}}$, $q^{2}$, etc.

It seems to me that its a bit of a coincidence that so many of the physical relationships are natural numbers when I don't see why he couldn't have been something like $1/r^{2.3}$. If this were the nature of things I don't think we would have just developed a different numbering system that then makes these natural: say with our new system being 2.3, 4.6, etc.