Oh yeah. The history of numbers is long and complicated. I think today we take for granted the idea that numbers are objects (in some abstract sense). In the pa

Oh yeah. The history of numbers is long and complicated. I think today we take for granted the idea that numbers are objects (in some abstract sense). In the past, there was simply no concept of number as a thing. Numbers were used for counting or measuring, so they existed only as adjectives attached to their objects of counting/measuring, not nouns in their own rite.