Academy of Sciences of Heroesland

And even earlier, it was believed that the Earth was flat and the sun revolved around it.

And some believe so even now :)

The attempts of a person to explain nature with numbers are amusing.

Here, by the way, it's not entirely about numbers. If we are still talking about physics, then almost every theory is based on some kind of equations. However, these are equations of a different nature, not numbers like the ones we are used to from the school algebra course, such as x^2+x=0. These so-called differential equations describe the behavior of a system in a rather general sense, and, if I may say so, characterize certain laws. These laws can manifest themselves in different ways, depending on different conditions that are taken into account when solving the equation (in mathematics and physics, they are called boundary and initial conditions). It is clear, for example, that in a room with sound-absorbing walls, sound will propagate differently than if the walls perfectly reflected sound. The laws of sound propagation remain the same, but to obtain a particular solution, it is necessary to take into account the properties of the environment in each specific case, and the results will be different.

So, in my opinion, all this seemingly abstract mathematics helps to describe the surrounding world quite accurately and universally, and personally, it doesn't seem so naive to me :)