Ian Stewart Quote

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