Preference Falsification

There are no fixtures in nature…You admire this tower of granite, weathering the hurts of so many ages. Yet a little waving hand built this huge wall, and that which builds is better than that which is built. The hand that built can topple it down much faster. Better than the hand, and nimbler, was the invisible thought which wrought through it, and thus ever behind the coarse effect is a fine cause which, being narrowly seen, is itself the effect of a finer cause. Everything looks permanent until its secret is known.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841_184ya (“All Things Renew”)