In 1638 Galileo published Two New Sciences, in which he described his inclined plane experiment.
He discovered that the acceleration of gravity was uniform, and could be modeled mathematically by the simple equation < Distance = c * t² >.
Question: Was this the first discovery of the fact that nature can be modeled mathematically?
In my (layman's) reading I haven't seen this discovery described as a “first”, but I can't think of any prior example. Am I missing something obvious?
I would say that the first occurrence of mathematically modeling nature was probably the use of numbers to count collections of real-world objects.