>It is true, of course, that physics chooses certain mathematical concepts for the formulation of the laws of nature, and surely only a fraction of all mathematical concepts is used in physics. It is true also that the concepts which were chosen were not selected arbitrarily from a listing of mathematical terms but were developed, in many if not most cases, independently by the physicist and recognized then as having been conceived before by the mathematician. It is not true, however, as is so often stated, that this had to happen because mathematics uses the simplest possible concepts and these were bound to occur in any formalism.

That last point is unconvincing. Maybe they aren't the simplest possible concepts, but it surely must be the case that had we evolved in any universe, we would have sought to understand it and would have formalized that understanding. That's not all that math is, but it has led to several popular branches of it. Surprising? Unreasonable? Not at all.