There are in fact four very significant stumbling blocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge.

All science requires mathematics. The knowledge of mathematical things is almost innate in us. This is the easiest of sciences, a fact which is obvious in that no one's brain rejects it; for laymen and people who are utterly illiterate know how to count and reckon.

To ask the proper question is half of knowing.

For if any man who never saw fire proved by satisfactory arguments that fire burns. His hearer's mind would never be satisfied, nor would he avoid the fire until he put his hand in it that he might learn by experiment what argument taught.

There are four great sciences, without which the other sciences cannot be known nor a knowledge of things secured ... Of these sciences the gate and key is mathematics ... He who is ignorant of this [mathematics] cannot know the other sciences nor the affairs of this world.

All science requires mathematics.

Mathematics is the gate and key to science.