Galileo's strategy of directing the scientist's attention to the quantifiable properties of matter proved extremely successful in physics, but it also exacted a heavy toll. During the centuries after Galileo, the focus on quantities was extended from the study of matter to all natural and social phenomena within the framework of the mechanistic worldview of Cartesian-Newtonian science.
This laid the groundwork for an economic system that isolated the accumulation of capital as the driving force while reducing considerations of health, values, equal opportunity and sustainability
