Reality → Mathematics and philosophy
Mathematics. The history of science is closely intertwined with the history of mathematics. Since antiquity arithmetic, algebra, and geometry advanced the understanding of quantity, structure, and space, essential topics of physics. The invention of calculus, which describes continuous change of physical parameters, was fundamental to the development of classical and modern physics. In his book "Our Mathematical Universe", Max Tegmark even postulates that reality is a mathematical structure, raising the philosophical question whether mathematics is an invention or a discovery.
Philosophy. The use of logic is fundamental to both, mathematics and philosophy. With logic, linguistics, and semantics, the human brain ponders ontological questions of reality. This may be as close as we can get to fundamentally understand physical reality. The brain's innate capabilities for thought, abstraction, and systematic research backed with experiments, will certainly lead to new discoveries and inventions, but final meaning may always remain a philosophical question.