So wouldn't math be as emergent as the reality it describes?

It seems we still operate under this top down, implicitly monotheistic assumption of some platonic form and law as the essence of reality. Yet essence is elemental, not ideal. It's from what we rise, not from what we fell. Some core drive, that through cycles of expansion, consolidation and the feedback inherent to the process, that lays down these layers of complexity we can only imagine as ordained, but only explain as cause and effect.

People are mobile organisms, which makes our process of perception sequential, so we see reality as linear and sequential, but yesterday doesn't cause today, the sun shining on a spinning planet creates this cycle of days and nights. There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present. Cause becomes effect. It's constant folding and unfolding.

Energy radiates out, toward the future, as order coaleces in, receding into the past.

Consciousness goes to the future, as thoughts go to the past.

Though it's our gut and heart processing and circulating the energy, while the mind sorts the information.

It's hard to both ride the wave and dissect its purpose and meaning. The effect is that we just crash to the bottom and not understand why.

The skeleton is not the seed.