What numbers could not be

THE attention of the mathematician focuses primarily upon mathematical structure, and his intellectual delight arises (in part) from seeing that a given theory exhibits such and such a structure, from seeing how one structure is modelled in another, or in exhibiting some new structure and showing how it relates to previously studied ones .... But ... the mathematician is satisfied so long as he has some entities or objects (or sets or numbers or functions or ''spaces or ''points) to work with, and he does not inquire into their inner character or ontological status.