Arjay, a good account of the human invention of mathematics written for laymen/women, including a discussion of the idea that parts mathematics are discovered as well, can be found in Phillip J. Davis and Reuben Hersh, The Mathematical Experience. It can still be bought (try Amazon), but you should be able to find it through a library. The authors are mathematicians, with a good knowledge of the philosophy and history of maths. Be careful of their account of Lakatos--they omit the most important feature of his work, on concept stretching.

Imre Lakatos gives a classic account of the extent of human choice in solid geometry, with an appendix that draws on similar material in the harder to understand area of analysis, in his book Proofs and Refutations. That is a classic work, by a notable philosopher who was also a mathematician. Be careful of the footnotes, which were inserted by the editors (the book was published after Lakatos's death)--the editors don't understand the implications of concept stretching either.

A couple of quick examples, to whet your appetite: the introduction of zero as a number (you don't count with it) was a contested choice, which involved stretching the concept of number. The introduction of infinitesimals in accounts of the calculus was highly controversial. When arguments about limits were improved, so that infinitesimals could be abandoned, they were. But a few decades ago, I think in the 1070s, they were re-introduced.

The notion that 1 is not a prime is not a discovery, but a choice--it makes a good deal of mathematics simpler.

Humans believed in gods before they came to believe in one god. Speculation (aided by archeological evidence) on why is interesting.

Squeers wrote:

"The “Jewish question” per se can only be reprehensible in our day and age, yet hatred of Jews was common currency when you were a lad. Where is your evidence, in “On the Jewish Question” that Marx was a “jew hating bigot”, beyond the prejudice of the day?
Von Ranke had the whole world in raptures over his periodisations and hierarchy of history well into the 20th century; is Marx to be singled out and condemned for subscribing to the scholarship of the day?

Dear Squeers,

Relevant to nothing you wrote: "We should all rejoice in Marx!" You singled him out and characterised him as humanist and pacifist. A humanist and pacifist should transcend the prejudices of his day.

That prejudice was not universal. Napoleon, neither humanist nor pacifist, threw open the ghettoes where he conquered. George Eliot wrote "Daniel Deronda" which had a Jew as hero. The British parliament chose Disraeli, a man of Jewish descent, as prime minister.

Some transcend bigotry.

Marx’s father was a Jew freed by Napoleon. After Napoleon was expelled from Germany Heinrich converted to Christianity to keep his status as lawyer. Karl was a convert at the age of six.

When the horrible pogrom took place at Kishinev Marx who protested other injustices was silent.

Many writings exhibit his pathological hatred. Eg. a letter to Engels referring to the Jew, Lassalle:

"Always this constant babble with the falsely excited voice, the unaesthetic, demonstrative gestures, the didactic tone. . . . And also the uncultivated eating and the horny lust of this "idealist." It is now completely clear to me that, as his skull shape and hair prove, he is a descendant of those Blacks who accompanied Moses on the exodus from Egypt. (If his mother or grandmother on his father's side did cross with a n----r.) Now this combination of Jewishness and Germanness upon the Black basic substance must bring forth a strange product. The pushiness of this fellow is also n----r-like."

Marx was a vile, Jew-hating, black-hating bigot. Read Sander Gilman’s “Jewish Self-Hatred” for details.

Dear David,
My “we should all celebrate Marx” was a throw away line of “free association” designed to get a response. Of course I know nothing of the man except that like us all he was a flawed human being.

I’ve done a quick search of prominent Jew haters from history and find it well nigh a universal list of “great men”, including Jesus Christ, Benjamin Franklin and a bevy of Popes. It’s a fascinating read: http://www.stormfront.org/jewish/antisemite.html
Marx, however, is a notable exception! Indeed, he and Marxism are rounded upon severally as being a Jew lover and a Jewish conspiracy respectively!
If Marx was an out of the ordinary “vile, Jew-hating, black-hating bigot” (sounds like the average white 20th century US citizen?), the world really is divided between wolves and lambs. Let's not forget the "sciences" of phrenology and physiognomy,(apropos of your quote)popular at the time.
The sad truth is that anti-Semitism has been around for ever, and continues to flourish along with racism generally. One of the most moving books I’ve read on the Jewish plight is Primo Levi’s “If This Is A Man”.
With respect (and I do highly respect your obvious learning and humanism) it seems to me that if you’re going to maintain this stance, you are either a misanthrope (since Marx's ostensible antisemitism is comparatively benign) or your benighted in ideology (like the rest of us), at least where Marxism is concerned.
Personally, I have always hated racism of any kind or degree.

Middlemarch also has a Jewish protagonist.

There’s a wonderful new version of “The Merchant of Venice” with Al Pachino in the video store btw

Certainly the greatest weakness of our OLO or OLO's is the lack of an Adjudicator or the inability to either find one, or design one.

Reckon that is what our OLO smart arses should be thinking about rather than tearing mental strips of each other, as well as off Prominent Thinkers of history.

Must say, in my experience with the group, as far as solving global problems, we seem to be getting no-where?

Dear George,

I knew of the Platonic forms but not of the views of Aristotle. Aristotle sounds more reasonable. Gibbs and Heaviside can claim more credit for vector calculus than Grassman. Someone would have thought of it, as it is a logical extension of previous mathematical developments.

You may find the following re Heaviside interesting from page 83 of "Father Figure" by Beverley Nichols:

“The Times, for instance, did not mention that he seldom dressed, and was usually attired in a kimono of pale pink silk. Nor did The Times see fit to mention that Heaviside, in a moment of pique, had caused most of the furniture of his house to be removed, and had replaced it by large granite rocks, which stood about in the bare rooms like the furnishings of some Neolithic giant. Through those fantastic rooms he wandered, growing dirtier and dirtier, and more and more unkempt - with one exception. His nails were always exquisitely manicured, and painted a glistening cherry pink.

Was Professor Heaviside mad? Presumably not – his scientific record shows him to have had a brain of exceptional range and delicacy; he was probably one of the few men of this century who could have argued intelligently with Einstein. But to me he was just another figure of whom to be afraid; he was surrounded with a childish aura of terror. Sometimes I used to creep under the bushes and peer through a gap in the wall, and watch him prowling about his ragged, thorny garden. Through the unwashed windows I could see the rocks, standing against the walls of his drawing-room. Now and then he would pause, and glare in my direction; he had a habit of suddenly pulling his pink dressing-gown very tight, and nicking his glistening fingers above his head.”

Peter Atkins in "The Periodic Kingdom" uses a geographical metaphor to describe the relationship of the different masses, number, reactivity and other properties of the elements in the periodic table to each other. http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/scerri/pdf/Atkins_critique.pdf contains a critique of his book.

I'm with bushbred on having a little adjudication - someone from the psychology, philosophy of science, or should we dare to be so old fashioned, the theological fields.
After all , the question is important - it's on people's minds. Perhaps a possible rephrase " To what extent is talk about God /or even gods, limited by human metaphor and words" - The answer to that seems simple.
But what about the beyond?
If psychologists are right , there may be at least too types of gods - the ones in our minds, and the one "out there" .
As raised , we might well ask how the constructs of the past merged into one ? Clearly its got a lot to do with the quite rational deduction that "if there is a creator ?" he had a hand in it all . As each year passes since those early days, science speaks of integrated function in a way which prescience days could only dream of. The gods of the greeks , like ours , presumably have their limits .

Moving onto Big G ( you don't have to , of course ) - if there really is no all powerful one outside and beyond what we can see and observe , a one who created and is behind all the creative engines around us, the boundaries we forge for our gods can be expected quite logically to be just lost in the limitations of our own knowledge .

So I'm with saying to the question- I say " we don't know whether what we might call God is necessarily a human invention".

The maths may explain function, but the growing wonder of the structure is not explained by just one equation ( A+T+G+C)or one man in a pink dress.
I need my god and if my version is an inadequate construct , at least i have somewhere concrete to keep coming back to- maybe what a costly session on the couch might tell me