" Thus, to take
an example directly connected with the subject of this book, the
Pythagorean numbers, envisaged as the principles of things, are by
no means numbers as understood by the moderns, whether
mathematicians or physicists, just as principial immutability is by
no means the immobility of a stone, nor true unity the uniformity of
beings denuded of all their qualities; nonetheless, because numbers
are in question in both cases, the partisans of an exclusively
quantitative science have not failed to reckon the Pythagoreans as
among their ‘precursors’. So as not unduly to anticipate develop-
ments to follow, only this much need be said here, namely that this is
but one more instance of the fact that the profane sciences of which
the modern world is so proud are really and truly only the
degenerate ‘residues’ of the ancient traditional sciences, just as
quantity itself, to which they strive to reduce everything, is, when
considered from their special point of view, no more than the
‘residue’ of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its
essence; thus these pretended sciences, by leaving aside or even
intentionally eliminating all that is truly essential, clearly prove
themselves incapable of furnishing the explanation of anything
whatsoever. "

― René Guénon , The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times