That's the commonsense pragmatic view I take towards math and knowledge in general. It conflicts with the mystical, platonic view which some mathematicians and fundamentalists share.

It's an interesting allegory by Bateson. Bateson is something of a platonist, too, in seeing mentality or aesthetics to be metaphysically foundational. I actually try to reconstruct morality in aesthetic terms, and I see aesthetics as being epistemically foundational in that it piggybacks on objectivity (both involve detachment or depersonalization).