“It is in this respect that the present study will be found to differ most strongly from ‘history of ideas’ approaches, which often tend to avoid going in any depth into technical details. However, as this book will show, it is precisely through the technical details, which become most absorbing when seen in the light of their full significance, that the true electric current of discovery runs. If we do not follow the current closely, we shall not really understand what happens and why. To use another image: the technical details are like the hinges of a door opened on a new vista. The change in view they make possible seems out of all proportion comes from the fact that, like hinges, they are mounted on a secure support: successful mathematical description of observed phenomena. And we cannot understand why the door swings unless we see how the hinges work.”
Julian B. Barbour, The discovery of dynamics, vol. 1 (1989) p. 17.
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