This matter--of course--cannot be seriously "debated", I trust we see..
(I concede that my 'reductio not-quite absurdum' evades anything resembling mathematical Proof (which is yet another abstraction.)) Guess I like Feynman's quip a lot:
~ "People think that, because we have a name for something: we understand it.."
I submit {merely} that [Reality] ever escapes our ken. A.E.'s "bright pebbles on a beach" is as good as any metaphor about the fact that metaphor IS ... [solely] what all our lore communicates. We don't even know if *math! is an intrinsic aspect of our Cosmos (that mostly empty-space with quanta perfusing it) or it is the only way our peculiar jelloware can function. At. all.
* Bertie (Russell) tried to reach, er "bed-rock" in the inductive/deductive processes we're so fond of: it drove him NUTS/a lesser person would have remained catatonic, but Bertie was LARGE
(and could choose off the likes of Wittgenstein) ..and related silver-tongued orators ... no?
Physics is Hard. But philosophy precedes it/also encompasses it ('physics" used to be called, "natural philosophy". Love. It.)
Ed: oTpy
Polonious, that insufferable busy-body asks Hamlet, What readst thou?
Hamlet--the kewl dude--replies ... Words ... words.
I think I'm going into my mind..
(I once asked a 'esoteric student', "So then, what do you know today, Fershure?")
Her reply was unarguably honest: "Nothing. Nothing at all."
Our species is pretty dense; I don't expect much improvement within n-millennia. Especially if we finish trashing the planet for all mammals and much else, as seems most likely ... y'know?)
Sam Clemens had our Number; see his posthumous words on The Whole Damned Human Race.
;^>