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72 points lemper | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.418s | source
1. youoy ◴[] No.41914202[source]
Thanks for sharing! I like to look at this example inside the debate of if mathematics are invented or discovered.

> That is how Whitehead and Russell did it in 1910. How would we do it today? A relation between S and T is defined as a subset of S × T and is therefore a set.

> A huge amount of other machinery goes away in 2006, because of the unification of relations and sets.

Relations are a very intuitive thing that I think most people would agree that are not the invention of one person. But the language to describe them and manipulate them mathematically is an invention that can have a dramatic effect on the way they are communicated.

replies(1): >>41916463 #
2. benlivengood ◴[] No.41916463[source]
I'd say mathematics is discovered and definitions are invented. E.g. "ordered pair" is not part of set theory, it's an invented name we give to a convenient definition of a set schema.

Even base-N representations are an invention: S() and zero are all you need, but Roman Numerals were an improvement over base-1 representations and base-N is significantly more convenient to work with.