ABSTRACT
Quantitative concepts possess power, simplicity, and beauty. So the temptation to suppose that the fundamental structure of all natural processes is quantitative is strong. It has been thus since science began. Pythagoras was the first to yield: “All things are made of numbers,” he is said to have taught. Plato ingeniously developed the same theme in the Timaeus: all things were composed out of the four basic elements, earth, fire, air, and water; they, in turn, were thought to be made up of certain regular polyhedra; the polyhedra, he said, were made of triangles; and, as is well known, triangles can be reduced to lines and angles and these to numbers. Such flights of mathematical fancy were to shape the course of science.
