Models. Humans hold models of the world in their minds, math helps you understand and create more complex and consistent models. You always exist in a simulation of your own construction to make sense of the universe.

My feeling is that no model can ever fully capture a complete description of reality, the information isn’t compressible to such a degree that approximations or abstractions can be lossless.

Most of what we consider to be invention is merely combinatoric novelty.