The practical man demands an appearance of reality at least. Always dealing in the concrete, he regards mathematical terms not as symbols or thought but as images of reality. A system acceptable to the mathematician because of its inner consistency may appear to the practical man to be full of contradictions because of the incomplete manner in which it represents reality.
Tobias Dantzig (1954). “Number, the Language of Science: A Critical Survey Written for the Cultured Non-mathematician”
