That brings to mind Heidegger's argument interpreting the Greek word "mathemata" as "rearranging what is already known." In the same context Heidegger also talks about transforming science into "research work" - i.e. changing it form the quest for meaning and knowledge into performance of rituals defined as "scientific."
This brings us to the nature of behaviorist experiments that Joanna mentioned, and for that matter, much what passes for economics nowadays. The subject matter and conclusions of behaviorist experiments (or economic theory) are so common sense that they border on triviality. You do not need a behavioral scientist telling you that dogs learn from experience - every kid who had a dog knows that from his/her own experience. You do not need an economist telling you that people balance benefits with costs and that the more of something they have the less value they attach to individual units of that something - as the folk saying "a drop in a bucket" attests. As Bob Dylan aptly pointed out, you do not need a weatherman telling which way the wind blows.
What makes these subject matters and conclusions "scientific" is that they are transformed into scientific rituals aka experiments or mathematical formulae - hence Heidegger's rendition of "mathemata" as "rearranging what is already known." There are several reasons for so doing.
First is the elevation of common sense knowledge to the level that stays beyond common sense questioning. Such knowledge usually serves as some sort of ideology that legitimates a particular power structure that "owns" the knowledge - e.g. economics or heliocentric astronomy. The common sense roots of that ideology are important because they make the legitimating ideology demonstrable to even the most untrained minds - everybody can see that sun "goes" around the earth and everybody knows that people tend to be selfish and the impact of a drop depends on the size of the vessel to which it falls.
However that common sense knowledge must be insulated from questioning by common minds, for otherwise it would lose its power to legitimate the privileged status of those who claim its ownership. Therefore it must be removed from the realm of the common sense and placed in the realm of "imponderabilia" - something beyond questioning. One way of making that transformation is to re-cast that knowledge as derived from scientific rituals, such as experimentation or mathematical formulae. Another one is to express that knowledge in highly technical and incomprehensible jargon that few people have the patience to decipher. Math can be a very useful tool in that pursuit.
Another reason is that scientific rituals and jargon is what creates and maintains the intellectual commodity producing class. Science becomes what scientists do. These "research workers" (as Heidegger dubbed them) need to maintain their own class position, status, control of resources etc. which would be difficult to maintain if their role was limited simply to finding the "truth" and making it available to general public. However, if the goal of scientific inquiry is shifted from outcomes to procedures, two things happen. First, it can expand and perpetuate itself almost indefinitely. Second it needs a full time of dedicated workers to perform these activities. That justifies the existence of the science producing class.
A similar transformation took place in the arts. Art is no longer a creation of aesthetic objects, but a product of an artist's work. Anything an artist makes is an object of art. What started as a joke by Marcel Duchamp who protested against commodification of art, quickly turned into a ritual defining the art producing class.
To summarize, much of what passes for today's science (or art) is in fact a social ritual (a 'sentiment of rationality') performed to maintain the social class and status of people who "own" that ritual in one capacity or another. This statement is not intended to "deconstruct" science (or art), but rather re-affirm its objectivity by weeding out its false (i.e. subjective) forms.
Wojtek