The Burning of the House of Lords and Commons, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), Philadelphia Museum of Art, image from Wikimedia Commons

The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.

John von Neumann, 1903-1957, founder of modern detonation theory and computer science

"The scientist describes what is; the engineer creates what never was."

Theodore von Kármán, 1881-1963, father of aerothermochemistry