This is kind of it I think. It's not just physics that drives interesting math, and it's not just recently that this relationship holds. Math is, IM humble O, the ultimate domain-specific language. It's a tool we use to model things, and then often it turns out that the model is interesting in its own right. Trying to model new things (ex. new concepts of reality) yields models that are interesting in new ways, or which recontextualize older models; and and so we need to reorganize, condense, generalize, etc; and so the field develops.
A lot of the newer generative ML models are also using differential equations/Boltzmann distribution based approaches (state space models, "energy based" models) where the statistical formulations are cribbed wholesale from statistical physics/mechanics and then plugged into a neural network and autodiff system.
The best example is probably the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm which was invented by nuke people.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150603234436/http://flynnmicha...
(I was once a reasonably successful Physicist, so I might be biased :D)
I think I read that the 20th century was a revolution because of the marriage between physics and math. Quarternions are key to relativity. Discrete math is littered all over quantum mechanics and the Standard Model. Like U(1) describes electromagnetism, SU(2) describes the weak force and SU(3) describes the strong nuclear force. In particular the mass of the 3 bosons that mediate the weak force is what led directly to the Higgs mechanism being theorized (and ultimately shown experimentally).
One of the great advances of the 20th century was that we (provably) found every finite group. And those groups keep showing up in physics.
The article mentions how string theory has led to new mathematics. This is really interesting. I'm skeptical of string theory just because there's no experimental evidence for "compact dimensions". It seems like a fudge. But interestingly there have been useful results in both physics and maths based on if string theory was correct.
Arithmetic itself is a consequence of physical conservation: if you have a collection of four acorns, another collection of three acorns, then combine them without dropping an acorn, then you must have a collection of seven acorns. It is our deep physical understanding of space and causality which leads to simple arithmetic being intuitively true to most (if not all) vertebrates. (If the squirrel only got six acorns after combining then there must be a causal explanation for the quantitative discrepancy; another squirrel stole an acorn from the older stash, or maybe it fell in a hole.)
The measurements, theories, and currently understood or applicable math may not match up with observations.
People ponder and discover, then attempt to explain the observations and measurements with a new theory. If the theory pans out, a deeper explanation of that theory is necessary and that's where the new math's at.
It's not that physics is good at creating math. Physics is good at describing our observations /with/ math. That's kind of its whole job.
Next time you look at raindrops in a puddle, try to imagine how you would describe those movements scientifically. One needs math for that.
Sometimes the available tools and math are sufficient for a thorough explanation, and sometimes one needs to invent a universe of math to describe a tiny fluctuation.
For example, pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. It’s just what a circle is in two dimensions. The value of pi isn’t any more mysterious or connected to physics than the existence of this thing called a circle. If you have some other Euclidean shapes you’ll have other ratios and values that have other relationships to other things in physical reality.
And if reality was different, hence the physical laws were different then the math would be different.. and the beings in that world might wonder why their math and physics were so interconnected.
Imagine a universe where the laws are best described in iambic hexameters under the condition that the last letters of the stanzas form specific words.
The ancients held some believes like that: kabala, astrology and the like. How wonderfully absurd it must have felt to them that the answer was something even more removed from reality.
cf. string theory
Of course it's not anything like a proof but something that bolsters an intuition.
* https://web.archive.org/web/20210212111540/http://www.dartmo...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness...
But the opposite is also true: the physical reality that has been explained by mathematical thinking is just a tiny fraction of all the reality out there.
https://youtu.be/obCjODeoLVw?si=2akBzyo-fC2j90OH
Entertaining viewpoint
Instead of reasoning on the worth of the effort spent in this direction to investigate nature (a very tangible companion) they try to steer the discourse toward this nonsense. We spent >50 years listening to these tales and the time has long passed since we are required to stop playing with these smoke and mirrors.
The end.
There's no magic here.
Disclosure, I'm a mathematician.