It is too often forgotten that even the most “objective” science such as physics is but a description, interpretation and ordering of physical reality from a selected point of view.

In founding terrestial dynamics, Galileo, the father of modern experimental physics, selected concepts that could be given exact mathematical definitions and cast in a form conducive to quantitative results. The qualitative aspects of observed phenomena, such as the color of an accelerated body, and the ultimate cause of motion—a purely metaphysical problem—do not enter into the mathematical dynamical system of Galileo.