But one could argue that sorting is a fundamental property of, presumably as keys, the numbers themselves, and therefore any alteration on an algorithm is a pla

But one could argue that sorting is a fundamental property of, presumably as keys, the numbers themselves, and therefore any alteration on an algorithm is a play on how numbers are ordered? As an example merge sort established an invariant in its divide step which is exploited on the conquer step. Moving this idea forward comparison based sorting establishes some version of this invariant. This argument seems to make sense to me though.