Modernism

The reason for the success of the moderns

One of the problems the medievals had was that they tried to solve too much at once. For them, motion was kinesis, all actualization of potentials. So an orbiting planet, a ripening apple, and a maturing puppy dog were all in motion. Try digging a theory of motion out of that, monkey boy.

So the moderns broke it all up into separate problems. They reduced motion to local motion: to change only of location from change in general. The morphogenesis of a puppy dog became a different problem, addressed be it noted with different tools. The tools of physics are not entirely suited to the puppy dog. This way they could make stunning progress within a limited domain.

http://tofspot.blogspot.se/2013/06/if-only-tool-you-allow-yourself-is.html