"It has, no doubt, been worth the metaphysical barbarism of a few centuries to possess modern science. Why did none of them see the tremendous difficulties involved? Here, too, in light of our study, can there be any doubt of the central reason? These founders of the philosophy of science were absorbed in the mathematical study of nature. Metaphysics they tended more and more to avoid, so far as they could avoid it; so far as not, it became an instrument for their further mathematical conquest of the world. Any solution of the ultimate questions which continued to pop up, however superficial and inconsistent, that served to quiet the situation, to give a tolerably plausible response to their questionings in the categories they were now familiar with, and above all to open before them a free field for their fuller mathematical exploitation of nature, tended to be readily accepted and tucked away in their minds with uncritical confidence."
E.C. Burtt, 'The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science', Doubleday Anchor Book, 1954, pp. 305-306)
