"The historical approach, with its aim of detecting how things began and arriving from these origins at a knowledge of their nature, is certainly perfectly legitimate; but it also has its limitations. If everything were in continual flux, and nothing maintained itself fixed for all time, there would no longer be any possibility of getting to know about the world, and everything would be plunged into confusion."
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Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by , Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 55.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gottlob_Frege
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