The 'Infidel Mathematician' is thought to have been Edmund Halley. 'Apart from his more specifically scientific preoccupations, Berkeley's more general aim ... is to show that the goal of science can be no more than describing phenomena through the laws and theories ("hypotheses") of science that govern them, and thus to trace the "grammar" or "language of nature" without intervening concepts, at least insofar as these concepts might be construed existentially or as sources of "active power", which in Berkley's terminology would amount to giving an "explanation"' (DSB).