(February 17, 2016 at 1:40 pm)Jörmungandr Wrote:(February 16, 2016 at 10:10 pm)Jehanne Wrote: I have no idea how you can say this. In a right triangle, does the square of the hypotenuse equal the sums of the squares of its two sides? Is that true or not? And, if you say that such is only a "product of the human mind," when did this truth (if, it is, true) come into being? Are you saying that the planets of our solar system started going around the Sun in ellipses only after Kepler discovered those orbits? If so, what were the planets doing prior to Kepler & Galileo?
Before they were concepts in the mind of a thinking being they were non-facts. They didn't exist and the relationship which we express as an ellipse was just a peculiar motion. Numbers and mathematical truths may be said to exist in a figurative sense, but it's debatable whether they have any sort of transcendent existence. Since your whole argument depends upon a debatable premise, it's not very persuasive as an argument.
This question goes to the heart of my argument -- Are the truths of mathematics discovered or are they invented; of course, I believe the former to be true.
