Philosophy on the head of a matchstick

I was idly watching a match burn t'other day (not for too long mind, it was in 'my' fingers) and I watched the flame twist and weave its chaotic dance (sure beats working, rather watch a match burn anyday) my mind got bored and started to do other things.... distractedly, I thought about how the flame is merely the result of a chemical reaction, then my mind wandered as it reasons it has the choice to, and I marvelled briefly at how, no matter whatever lies in the cosmos, we can, or at least can start to, explain and understand.
My mind then did a little meandering jig, which made me giggle a bit, and I thought about chemical formula and visualised a professor at a blackboard chalking odd sequences of wriggly and sharp lines. Then I realised how they all end up as maths. And how everything we can explain can be explained in numbers.
Then my mind did something fairly unusual (not very unusual, that's not unusual) it held up a mirror to my thoughts... I stood back aghast, surely not? If all we know, can know, will know, can be explained, or reduced, to numbers?

Then do we think, at most primal level, in numbers? Or are numbers something more than what they seem... My mind ran back to me and prodded me sharply at the back of my eyeball - I dropped the match.