Mathematics

Mathematics as a term descended from the Greek adjective which more directly means mathematical. Which is to say that the word mathematics has its root in the description of a characteristic, and that over time this description of characteristic became a substance in its own right. Much like the change from the use of numbers as descriptions of quantity eventually becoming objects in their own right, to be studied without context. Looking to more recent mathematical developments this pattern continues to hold–entire collections of properties, as theories, have been described in such a way as to make them objects, relatable to one another by new forms of characteristic.

Which brings us to a second piece of history: mathematics was used as a plural. People used to say “the mathematics are”. Mathematics was not one thing until a couple hundred years ago, by which time the people practicing the various disciplines inside of it would have had tools to move back and forth between them. Another way of saying this is it became an “uncountable” noun. Which predates its development of uncountable sizes of sets by about 60 years. It’s like a joke of history that the thing closest to counting lost count of itself.

The history of mathematics is twofold: to make one of the many, and to make substance from characteristic.