Regarding the question 'can R help me find the best fitting model', there is probably a function to do this, assuming you can state the set of models to test, but this would be a good first approach for the set of n-1 degree polynomials:
polyfit <- function(i) x <- AIC(lm(y~poly(x,i)))
as.integer(optimize(polyfit,interval = c(1,length(x)-1))$minimum)
Notes
The validity of this approach will depend on your objectives, the assumptions of optimize() and AIC() and if AIC is the criterion that you want to use,
polyfit() may not have a single minimum. check this with something like:
for (i in 2:length(x)-1) print(polyfit(i))
I used the as.integer() function because it is not clear to me how I would interpret a non-integer polynomial.
for testing an arbitrary set of mathematical equations, consider the 'Eureqa' program reviewed by Andrew Gelman here
Update
Also see the stepAIC function (in the MASS package) to automate model selection.