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… - William Whewell

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

Man is the interpreter of nature, science the right interpretation.

We unfold out of the Idea of Space the propositions of geometry, which are plainly truths of the most rigorous necessity and universality. But if the idea of space were merely collected from observation of the external world, it could never enable or entitle us to assert such propositions: it could never authorize us to say that not merely some lines, but all lines, not only have, but must have, those properties which geometry teaches. Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but half comprehends the meaning.