Interestingly, this argument was weak before we ended up with truly elementary particles. Cause there’s no such thing as three apples or three people. They are unique objects with similarities defined by an observer, and then you go deeper and note that “object” is also a purely synthetic delineation. 3 is a model, not an element of reality. Even advanced maths define it as a set which contains nothing, 1 and 2 (which contains nothing and 1, which contains nothing and is preceded by nothing). Counting and measuring is equivalent to drawing lines — adding something that wasn’t there before.
The fact that particles have identity is also vague, afaiu, so existence of numbers or their non-biological origin is not as easy to prove by example as it seems.
> [sic]Cause there’s no such thing as three apples or three people.
I understand what you're saying. Occurrences like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_species demonstrate that the idea of "species" isn't firm and that what truly matters is each individual and their unique circumstances. But this seems to me to be more a limitation of language and philosophy than a repudiation of math.
As you pointed out, it's all equivalent to drawing tally lines, counting pebbles, sliding counters on an abacus, or counting fingers and toes. Despite the fractal nature of coastlines and the constant exchange of matter and energy between adjacent parts of the universe, it is possible to agree upon useful delineations. And there is not any alternative maths which happens to describe practical observations in a way which does not reduce to the maths with which we are familiar.
They are useful repeatedly because they derive from fundamental properties of the observable universe. We can imagine other sorts of universes - one with hyperbolic geometry as opposed to flat, for instance ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe ). Parts of geometry would work differently there, and laws of motion as well. But interestingly, many fundamental rules of math would still apply. Just with different outcomes which are less useful for predicting results here.
The interesting part is that perception is shaped by language. The Ancient Greeks did not have a word for blue, which led to things like the sky being described as "wine-colored" or "bronze". Similarly, the English "blue" is split into two in Russian: light blue (голубой – goluboy) and deep/dark blue (синий – siniy), a speaker has to choose between them when describing something.
The wavelengths may have always existed but colors only become a thing when we draw the arbitrary lines between them.
In English, speakers are forced to make the same light/dark distinction between pink/red and orange/brown as well. I don’t think most native speakers of English think of orange as the same as light brown.
You may be interested in https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ if not seen it yet. If you desaturate the main chart to around 70%, #8a3324 lands onto a red-brown-orange triangle. I think I agree with that someone, cause at 70% the whole orange region sort of bleaks away.
Fundamentally, it’s the same type of problem - and really more of a philosophical thing.