I took a history of mathematics course last year and the professor shared that in ancient times if a mathematician dared propose the idea of a negative in a square root (imaginary number), this was considered preposterous and the person could get ridiculed. Why were they so scared of a possible discovery? I understand it rearranges mathematics and its foundation, but in essence, it’s just discovering something about the subject that we famously have taken a long time to grasp in the first place. I don’t think they believed at that time that they understood mathematics as a whole yet, why were they so protective?