In mathematical science, more than in all others, it happens that truths which are at one period the most abstract, and apparently the most remote from all useful application, become in the next age the bases of profound physical inquiries, and in the succeeding one, perhaps, by proper simplification and reduction to tables, furnish their ready and daily aid to the artist and the sailor.
Charles Babbage, Peter Mark Roget (1989). “Reflections on the decline of science in England and on some of its causes: with a new appendix of correspondence by Charles Babbage & Peter M. Roget from the Philosophical magazine”
