Mathematics is one of our most valuable tools, and perhaps the most valuable tool, in this reduction of nature down to its key elements. It is founded on mental abstractions like number, shape, and dimension, which are distillations of the properties of objects in the real world. It complements our natural instincts and intuition in magical, unexpected ways. For example, when perspective and shadowing, which are entirely geometrical concepts, were first employed by artists in medieval Italy, paintings suddenly leaped from the flat two-dimensional world of medieval icons to the infinitely richer three-dimensional world of Renaissance art

Mathematics is one of our most valuable tools, and perhaps the most valuable tool, in this
reduction of nature down to its key elements. It is founded on mental abstractions like number, shape,
and dimension, which are distillations of the properties of objects in the real world. It complements
our natural instincts and intuition in magical, unexpected ways. For example, when perspective and
shadowing, which are entirely geometrical concepts, were first employed by artists in medieval Italy,
paintings suddenly leaped from the flat two-dimensional world of medieval icons to the infinitely
richer three-dimensional world of Renaissance art