Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of erro… - William Whewell

The catastrophist constructs theories, the uniformitarian demolishes them.

And so no force however great can stretch a cord however fine into an horizontal line which is accurately straight.

According to the technical language of old writers, a thing and its qualities are described as subject and attributes; and thus a man’s faculties and acts are attributes of which he is the subject. The mind is the subject in which ideas inhere. Moreover, the man’s faculties and acts are employed upon external objects; and from objects all his sensations arise. Hence the part of a man’s knowledge which belongs to his own mind, is subjective: that which flows in upon him from the world external to him, is objective.