Material failure comes from taking the raw materials and turning it into an object that is not inherent in the material. Take a tree that wants to be a chair, and make a table of it, and it will fail. Take a rock that wants to be a statue and make it into a birdbath, and it will fail.
Understand what the raw material wants, needs to be, and obey that, and it will not fail.
So, was this Galileo's middle finger? I think he used that one quite a bit near the end...