Analysis and synthesis - creativity and limitations

... analysis has brought us to foundational models that come close to achieving perfection. The history of physics emphasizes that synthesis is a challenging and deeply creative activity in its own right. It is more open-ended, however, and less easy to summarise, so I'll only be able to mention a few illustrative high points. We shall also see that, in the course of its triumphal advance, ironically the method of analysis and synthesis has itself discovered profound, sharply defined limits to its explanatory power. 

Frank Anthony Wilczek [American theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 2004] 
in Analysis and Synthesis: What Matters for Matter