Science uses maps of metaphors to cover observable space. Math is one of them.

The math in science isn't provable, objective, or self-consistent, and mathematicians who look at physics regularly have "Wait a minute..." moments.

But scientific math is a useful toolbox of techniques that create useful metaphors where the maps and the experiences coincide, to a useful extent.

Science is really a process of inventing and trying out metaphor maps and keeping the ones that match experience.

Reality itself is likely unknowable, because our experience of it is too limited to provide enough information to get down to the bedrock mechanisms.

So we have these intermediate models that get some way there, but clearly have gaps and edges where the parts don't fit together.

Everything starts at human-scale and works outwards.

A model is an idea, activity, or object that represents some other idea, activity, or object. A good model is one that helps you understand or manipulate the thing that it represents.