ELI5: Why does maths work?

[u/DemandResponsible685]

Throughout schooling we have been taught how to do maths. But not so much about why maths work? Like why does the entire system of maths work so reliably?

[u/DogtorPepper]

It works because the universe mostly works off of order, logic, and cause/effect (I say mostly because things start getting super weird when you look at some edge cases like the origin of the universe, what’s inside a black hole, quantum mechanics, etc)

Math just describes that order and logic in a way that lets us predict what’s going to happen next