I had an epiphany re: your comment re: Pythagoras and numerology vs mathematics. Numerology tends to encourage over-emphasis on the tree instead--taking the tree out of the forest, "the Thing" or things out of useful and suggestive context by removing things from scope and place. I suspect some might have trouble getting your idea of meaning of mathematics because mathematics is (errantly) taught as a raw, cold science rather than a linguistic system of symbology for communicating relations, observations..motifs. I suppose it really is a linguistic system for communicating motifs. Its so useful that much effort has been undertaken to dumb folks down to keep them away from it. Numerology is perhaps more like fixation on a single note without regard for context of the 'song' or 'motif' with math being about symbology for describing or motifs that math can be utilized to described.
Q. What is the physicist really doing in penning an equation? A. Expressing in symbology the motifs observed with respect to the given system or phenomenon observed.
At least such might be my opinions.
Related: Decrypting Education in America
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