… … …?
A PBS commercial for Nova (for next week's episode, called "The Great Math Mystery") just asked, "Is math an invention, or a discovery?" and my brain so does not understand how to wrap itself around how you would even begin to answer that question.
Of course, I am someone who took an extraordinarily long time to understand that 2+3 was the same as 3+2 as a child, and would break out in, I don't know, panic itching when my mother made me do timed math practice sheets at the kitchen table, in addition to being really spatially challenged - those puzzles where you had to figure out which set of six identical squares would fold up to make a cube? Bane of my existence - so this is not especially surprising. It sounds like an interesting episode, but I am not sure that even Nova would be able to explain this to me in a way that would let me get anything out of it. :)
Of course, I am someone who took an extraordinarily long time to understand that 2+3 was the same as 3+2 as a child, and would break out in, I don't know, panic itching when my mother made me do timed math practice sheets at the kitchen table, in addition to being really spatially challenged - those puzzles where you had to figure out which set of six identical squares would fold up to make a cube? Bane of my existence - so this is not especially surprising. It sounds like an interesting episode, but I am not sure that even Nova would be able to explain this to me in a way that would let me get anything out of it. :)