Mathematics is just a tool, like language, for describing reality, not reality itself.
A cake is not made of numbers like 5 cups flour + 3 eggs, but we can model it as such. In principle we could invent any such system of symbols to describe the physical world but those symbols don’t define it. The physical world only nudges us toward what symbols work and which don’t.
Not a strawman. I’m not stating that math isn’t real. It’s real as an abstract framework that humans create and refine. It’s not, however, foundational to the physical world in the way fundamental particles or gravity is. Numbers and equations don’t push particles around, they simply help us represent that kind of phenomena that we observe.
A cake is not made of numbers like 5 cups flour + 3 eggs, but we can model it as such. In principle we could invent any such system of symbols to describe the physical world but those symbols don’t define it. The physical world only nudges us toward what symbols work and which don’t.