To criticize mathematics for its abstraction is to miss the point entirely. Abstraction is what makes mathematics work. If you concentrate too closely on too limited an application of a mathematical idea, you rob the mathematician of his most important tools: analogy, generality, and simplicity. Mathematics is the ultimate in technology transfer.

Does God Play Dice: The New Mathematics of Chaos, Chapter 17 (p. 363), Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Malden, Massachusetts, USA. 2002