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But as you get further and further into CG and Poser picks up these extra features, it starts to become all mathematics.

The artistic concepts relating to composition, etc, apply in Poser 1 just as they do to Poser Pro 2010. As each version in between has been released, the techniques learned in art class have not changed... constructing a good scene, conveying emotion in a face, etc, has followed the same rules throughout. The things that have changed are the technical bits, those based on mathematics (mainly the physics of light).

As a result, the natural progression of all future Posers, as far I can see, will involve more and more mathematics and being aware of what value X does to a render. The baseline of artistic knowledge needed to make a good picture will remain basically unchanged.

Agreed! Fully! The basics of a good image are the same, irrespective whether it is drawn with charcoal, painted oil on canvas, or made using Poser.

Now unless your name is Leonardo da Vinci, the chance that you are both a highly skilled image composer and a genius in math at the same time are slim. Math highbrows in general are not good at imaging, and artists are hardly ever top performers in math, and more likely shy away from it.
Art classes, including instructions about composition, light, etc. are compulsory at school and out of school they can be followed on virtually every street corner.
Math too is compulsory at school, but hardly with the aspects that are used to build or tune shaders.

So, to keep the user-base for Poser, we must try to chew the unavoidable math bit down to a level that can be understood by the average human with some interest in math. Find a way to keep the hairy math 'under the hood', and present suitable options in a manner that can be understood, used and tinkered with by users. A good example is the set of filter functions in Photoshop: The basic operations are lumped into adjustable and recognizable presets that make sense for users.