[garmaine]

Math is fundamentally a description of the physical world. Mathematicians don’t like to hear this because they have their own ideas about the platonic realm of math, but it is true. We can debate which logical rules or axioms to include, but fundamentally any math has to have some sort of rules for deductive reasoning, which carry over from observation about the physical world: effects have antecedents, with a causal link between the two.

Now we have gone from that to the present day when we have maths which aren’t yet found to align with physical reality. So I can see why people want to say that it is a mental construction. But still, even these abstract maths operate according to rules we derived from the physical universe.

[syki]

You sidestepped the question about what rules of logic are intrinsic to the universe. There are different versions of logic. Is Law of the Excluded Middle intrinsic or not? A great many physicists, philosophers, and mathematicians don’t believe logic is intrinsic to the universe. Is ZFC intrinsic to the universe? Do large exist as a deduction from the math that is intrinsic to the universe?

[garmaine]

The law of the excluded middle is also known as the “sandwich theorem” because it drives directly from a physical observation. I happen to agree with the constructionists that mathematics is better formulated without it, but it is most definitely a rule derived from analogy to the physical world.

As a physicist myself, I’ll tell you that there isn’t a single one which believes that the universe doesn’t operate according to knowable rules. That’s kinda the definition of what it means to be a physicist.