The flip-side to this view of mathematics, which you’re closer to when you say “Math has always been and will continue to always be a method to how we perceive the world and how we perceive our place in the world.” Is that math is simply a construct built on top of what we see, and mathematics is merely the most formal attempt to apply structure to what is a fundamentally unstructured world. In this view, math is seen as not existing in any sense more universal than the goats that it is counting.

Your combination of these two ideas is perfectly reasonable, since I think it’s futile to really debate which is correct, and for practical purposes better to remember that mathematics both connects us to and allows us to understand the universe, while in fact being totally a construct of human minds.

Euclid was certainly seeking universal truths in his explorations of geometry, but mathematicians were never quite at ease with his notion that parallel lines should NEVER interesect. It turns out that if you assume they do not, you have a geometry that is appropriate in small flat surfaces, and if you assume they must eventually, you have a geometry that is appropriate for things on the scale of the solar system or bigger. You could argue that the latter is inherently true, or you could argue that both are just good descriptions of the systems that they observe, and you’d probably be right either way.

Thanks