Physics is written in this grand book of the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze.  But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and to read the alphabet in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders in a dark labyrinth.

-Galileo Galilei