[thinkpad20]

> Just as natural languages derive directly from our needs to do things with, and communicate about, things in, and state of in the real world, such as running away from lions, attracting mates, and (more recently) engaging in commerce, mathematics derives directly from our needs to do the exact same sorts of things: count chickens (or the number of lions you are running away from), mark time, distance, and rate (as you run from them) and their relationships, and so on.

This is a pretty half-baked comparison. Math is great for describing things which can be defined precisely and their interactions. Numbers, physical systems, economics, etc.

Human language can be (and is) used for these purposes as well, but more broadly is useful for an entirely different purpose: expressing emotions, sussing out the meaning of things, developing relationships, providing a voice for the human condition. Mathematics is ill-suited at best for these purposes. Both language paradigms may be able to quantify how fast one has to run to get away from a lion. Only one of them can express why you’d want to, or the terror you’d feel trying to do so.