“ the sequence of natural numbers is a human construction. […] The distinction between odd and even numbers is not created by us: it is an unintended and unavoidable consequence of our creation. Prime numbers, of course, are similar unintended autonomous and objective facts; […] there are conjectures like Goldbach’s [that] refer indirectly to objects of our creation, refer directly to problems and facts which have somehow emerged from our creation and which we cannot control or influence: they are hard facts, and the truth about them is often hard to discover. This exemplifies what I mean when I say that the …world [of objective knowledge] is largely autonomous, though created by us
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Popper, K.R. (1968). “Epistemology without a knowing subject.” In B Van Rootselaar and J.F. Stall (Eds.) Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science III: International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co.
