I think Bean makes a lot of good points here. But I also think the citation shows how much our perception of science has changed from the early to late 19th century, and even up till today.

No science doth make known the first principles on which it buildeth.

RELATIVITY

PART I

THE SPECIAL THEORY OF RELATIVITY

I

PHYSICAL MEANING OF GEOMETRICAL PROPOSITIONS

In your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble
building of Euclid's geometry, and you remember -- perhaps with more respect than love --
the magnificent structure, on the lofty staircase of which you were chased about for
uncounted hours by conscientious teachers. By reason of your past experience, you would
certainly regard everyone with disdain who should pronounce even the most out-of-the-way
proposition of this science to be untrue. But perhaps this feeling of proud certainty would
leave you immediately if some one were to ask you: "What, then, do you mean by the
assertion that these propositions are true?" Let us proceed to give this question a little
consideration.

Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as "plane," "point," and "straight line," with
which we are able to associate more or less definite ideas, and from certain simple
propositions (axioms) which, in virtue of these ideas, we are inclined to accept as "true."
Then, on the basis of a logical process, the justification of which we feel ourselves compelled
to admit, all remaining propositions are shown to follow from these axioms, i.e. they are
proven. A proposition is then correct ("true") when it has been derived in the recognised
manner from the axioms. The question of the "truth" of the individual geometrical propositions
is thus reduced to one of the "truth" of the axioms.Now it has long been known that the
last question is not only unanswerable by the methods of geometry, but that it is in
itself entirely without meaning...... The concept "true" does not tally with the assertions
of pure geometry, because by the word "true" we are eventually in the habit of designating
always the correspondence with a "real" object; geometry, however, is not concerned with
the relation of the ideas involved in it to objects of experience, but only with the logical
connection of these ideas among themselves.

Albert Einstein