Is mathematics invented or discovered ?

[Salvijus]

9 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

What's a loving word?

A sound that carries a loving intention. The same thing can be communicated with a gaze. Or just pure energy. 

9 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

You can poke an amoeba and it will move away to avoid danger - does that imply anything is being "communicated"?

Yes. Your actions are speaking. It's called body language. Ameba is interpreting your actions. 

9 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Same as above: a sound, by itself, is just a sound.

Everything reveberates. And every reverberation has a message. 

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 08:43 AM by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

On 12/11/2025 at 7:34 AM, Salvijus said:

A sound that carries a loving intention. The same thing can be communicated with a gaze. Or just pure energy. 

"Carries." That's the keyword. How does that come about?! What makes it possible? 

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Yes. Your actions are speaking. It's called body language. Ameba is interpreting your actions. 

In a figurative sense, I would agree with your first claim.

Hmm, what if I gave you the finger? Or made a heart shape with my hands? Is there a distinction to be made between what the body does - adopting a certain posture, say - and what is then added to it (perhaps through interpretation), like the existence of gesture, symbol, meaning, and so on?

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Everything reveberates. And every reverberation has a message. 

 

Yeah, sand reacting to sound. Where is language to be found there?

Reverberation may be a function of movement and doesn't necessarily have to involve language of any kind.

Edited yesterday at 08:52 AM by UnbornTao

[Salvijus]

8 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Yeah, sand reacting to sound. Where is language to be found there?

Sand is a visual translation of what the reverberations are telling you. Same thing can be translated into many different languages. Now you're seeing a sound being translated into geometry. It can be translated into colors aswell. Then into feelings. And feelings into words. Geometric shapes can also be translated into mathematical equations. There's a reason why Phythagoras, who was a mystic, was deeply interested in math, geometry and music - he was studying the mind of God. 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:44 AM by Salvijus

[Alex_R]

When i'm on LSD trips i got the feeling that they are invented by me .

Edited yesterday at 07:08 AM by Alex_R

[UnbornTao]

8 hours ago, Salvijus said:

Sand is a visual translation of what the reverberations are telling you. Same thing can be translated into many different languages. Now you're seeing a sound being translated into geometry. It can be translated into colors aswell. Then into feelings. And feelings into words. Geometric shapes can also be translated into mathematical equations. There's a reason why Phythagoras, who was a mystic, was deeply interested in math, geometry and music - he was studying the mind of God. 

 

I think I can see what you mean, but then again, perceiving some change in shape or seeing patterns isn't the same as language. The reverberations themselves are just that - what could they possibly be saying? Why would they care, so to speak?

It's like thinking that a glass is "communicating" with you because it fell to the floor, broke, and made a sound, and you produced a reaction as a result of that event. The idea that something is being conveyed is entirely dependent on a linguistic context. Remove that, and it's just whatever the thing is: a perception, a sound, a shape, a visual pattern, a reaction. Geometry is geometry; a shape is a shape; color is color. What actually makes them capable of referring to an experience of what they are not? Language! What you call translation is enabled precisely by this language-possibility.

Would you call me scratching a blackboard with my fingernails - and your reaction to that sound - an example of communication?

We take the invention of language, and our experience of it, completely for granted, which is understandable. We assume it’s an objective reality. This brings me back to my point: it's hard to experience "life" prior to the invention of language.

Edited yesterday at 03:25 PM by UnbornTao

[Salvijus]

51 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

The reverberations themselves are just that - what could they possibly be saying? 

What is a beautiful melody saying? 

It's saying something that is much more profound than any word could ever capture. Yet we try to put those things into words aswell and it's okay. 

All of life is a cosmic melody. All of life is saying something that only your heart can understand. It's a universal language of the spirit. 

Edited yesterday at 04:15 PM by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Salvijus said:

What is a beautiful melody saying? 

It's saying something that is much more profound than any word could ever capture. Yet we try to put those things into words aswell and it's okay. 

What is a melody, and can it say something by itself? Really look into this.

Essentially, it's a set of notes arranged in a certain way - and you react to that. You might feel uplifted, sad, or connected when hearing it. But again, why would that necessarily mean that "languaging" has happened? In this case, I'm referring to music without lyrics, though the point would apply either way.

Yeah, but again, language goes beyond the words themselves. It's the notion that something is being conveyed, communicated, or translated into that makes it possible for a word to get an experience across. 

I think we might be at an impasse at this point.

Let's look at where its beauty, and the sense that it "says something," comes from. Wouldn't you say it might have more to do with you than with the sound itself? After all, it's just a perception. It's meaningless input filtered through your perceptive organs. By itself, it is just that - a sound.

1 hour ago, Salvijus said:

All of life is a cosmic melody. All of life is saying something that only your heart can understand. It's a universal language of the spirit. 

I'm not a fan of this kind of thinking when it comes to investigating things. Maybe it's true, but in my view, it doesn't really tackle the heart of the matter, which is language. It's a ready‑made answer crafted so I'll finally stop irritating you once and for all.

[Salvijus]

23 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Let's look at where its beauty, and the sense that it "says something," comes from. Wouldn't you say it might have more to do with you than with the sound itself? 

No, it's not a personal reaction. It's a universal scientific impact. Each reverberation has an equivalent color, geometry, feeling, and a mathematical equation. It's not in your head made up by you. It's universal so that even flowers and water molecules can understand it. 

Edited yesterday at 06:15 PM by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

20 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

No, it's not a personal reaction. It's a universal scientific impact. Each reverberation has an equivalent color, geometry, feeling, and a mathematical equation. It's not in your head made up by you. It's universal so that even flowers and water molecules can understand it. 

What's the sound of one hand clapping? The equivalent koan here could be: Where is language found in two hands clapping?

But okay, we are at an impasse.

Consider, though, that at some point you didn't know about this possibility of language. You had to learn it.

By GPT:

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Bring to mind the work it took for Helen Keller to make the connection between her teacher’s movements and the world of language. When Anne Sullivan first arrived, Helen could imitate finger-spelling but didn’t yet understand that those letter-patterns represented things in the world. Then one day Sullivan placed one of Helen’s hands under running water from a pump and spelled “w-a-t-e-r” into her other hand. Suddenly Helen realized that the cool liquid and the letters she felt were connected — that the motions meant water. This breakthrough opened the door to language for her, and from that moment her vocabulary and ability to communicate expanded rapidly.

 

Edited yesterday at 06:32 PM by UnbornTao

[Salvijus]

1 minute ago, UnbornTao said:

What's the sound of one hand clapping?

The sound of I AM. Yes, that too is a reverberation. 

[UnbornTao]

2 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

The sound of I AM. Yes, that too is a reverberation. 

Thanks. But I added the Helen Keller example above.

[Salvijus]

13 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Thanks. But I added the Helen Keller example above.

Mm, no comments on that example. Seems irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. 

Edited yesterday at 06:40 PM by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

5 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Mm, no comments on that example. Seems irrelevant as far as I'm concerned. 

At some point, she didn't have access to a possibility that you're taking to be a fact of the universe. You assume that a sound must automatically mean or convey something simply because it exists. But in her case, we can see that this connection had to be learned. The sensations of water on her body didn't automatically make her associate them with the experience of w-a-t-e-r. That context wasn't there on its own at the beginning.

[Salvijus]

11 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

You assume that a sound must automatically mean or convey something simply because it exists.

Well that's a scientific fact not an assumption. 

11 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

But in her case, we can see that this connection had to be learned. 

Yes, English needs to be learnt because it only has meaning within a group consensus. That too is a form of language but not most superficial one. I'm talking about deeper forms of language that require no invention and no group consensus to exist. 

Edited 17 hours ago by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

13 hours ago, Salvijus said:

Well that's a scientific fact not an assumption. 

What is? Didn't we have to invent language at some point in history? Could it be considered a historical development rather than a discovery?

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Yes, English needs to be learnt because it only has meaning within a group consensus. That too is a form of language but not most superficial one.

In that example, I imagine it's not about a particular language, it's something much more fundamental. The association she learned to make had to go beyond any English word or particular language. 

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I'm talking about deeper forms of language that require no invention and no group consensus to exist. 

Exactly, this is the main issue we're discussing, and the assumption being addressed: that language is an objective reality or exists objectively.

Edited 14 hours ago by UnbornTao

[Salvijus]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

What is? 

The fact that everything reveberates and every reverberation is saying something. That's a universal language. Not invented. Discovered. 

Edited 13 hours ago by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

36 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

The fact that everything reveberates and every reverberation is saying something. That's a universal language. Not invented. Discovered. 

We seem to be running in circles.

-

OK, let's say that everything reverberates. Isn't there some kind of leap that needs to occur so that the reverberation does more than simply reverberate - so that another being can make sense of the sound, rather than merely perceiving it as meaningless phenomena? (Here, let's take 'reverberation' as sound being heard by someone.)

As a simple exercise, consider two people talking. Sounds are made, and the sounds reverberate. BLAH BLAH BLAH. Is that all?

We're reading these pixels and making sense of them as we read right now. We are doing something with the pixels, it seems to me. The pixels are just a particular configuration on a screen, forming certain shapes. What can this tell us about language?

I'm not conscious of the nature of language yet; I'm sharing some observations that might or might not be true. The point is to take up the questioning for oneself.

[Salvijus]

13 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

OK, let's say that everything reverberates. Isn't there some kind of leap that needs to occur so that the reverberation does more than simply reverberate - so that another being can make sense of the sound, rather than merely perceiving it as meaningless phenomena?

The person need not invent or project a meaning onto the sound. Every reverberation has an inherent universal meaning that has nothing to do with personal interpretation of it. 

Edited 11 hours ago by Salvijus

[UnbornTao]

4 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

The person need not invent or project a meaning onto the sound. Every reverberation has an inherent universal meaning that has nothing to do with personal interpretation of it. 

What is reverberation again?

[Salvijus]

Just now, UnbornTao said:

What is reverberation again?

Energy.