Continuous distributions are basic to the theory of probability and statistics, and the calculus is necessary to handle them with any ease. - Richard Hamming

The people at the bottom do not have the larger, global view, but at the top they do not have the local view of all the details, many of which can often be very important, so either extreme gets poor results.

"From these early attempts to explain things slowly came philosophy as well as our present science. Not that science explains "why" things are as they are - gravitation does not explain why things fall - but science gives so many details of "how" that we have the feeling we understand "why." Let us be clear about this point; it is by the sea of interrelated details that science seems to say "why" the universe is as it is."

We are mainly interested in the processes... not... in presenting mathematics in its most abstract form. ...we will often begin with concrete forms and then exhibit the process of abstraction.