> How useful are universal truths compared to getting shit done? As I understand Greeks invented proofs because "universal thruths" they exported from Babylon

> How useful are universal truths compared to getting shit done? As I understand Greeks invented proofs because "universal thruths" they exported from Babylon and Egypt sometimes explicitly contradicted each other. I believe such contradictions may be a great nuisance when you try to get shit done. Egypt and Babylon were sufficiently "complex" societies for proofs, but their tradition treated mathematics as a bunch of useful facts about numbers and shapes. New generation just memorized them. We should think it worked for them in most cases, and when it didn't work it was not so often for them to start thinking a lot of reforming mathematics. Plus they were indoctrinated by the math they learned (authority of a teacher is above of anything else, i suppose) and to reform math was not a natural idea for them.