What are numbers? 2+2=4 how did we come up with that? I've always had the assumption that we just made numbers up and the rules to go along with them.. The infrastructure of our society is comprised of numbers: specifically time, and our calendar. Although of course the sun and moon we comprise our daily time of are natural, the way we observe, and therefore react to those objects (creating our time schedule) is a completely man-made device. Is this reliance of man-made numbers, and time, necessary? Is it, might you say, inevitable? What alternate paths could have served as our society's structure (both realistic and not,) and is there even a more efficient possibility?
They are either purely abstract thought that we have found a way to transcribe in this physical realm, or they are simply an invention of mankind like everything else.