Spasmodic Quotes (3 quotes)
Geology got into the hands of the theoreticians who were conditioned by the social and political history of their day more than by observations in the field. … We have allowed ourselves to be brainwashed into avoiding any interpretation of the past that involves extreme and what might be termed “catastrophic” processes. However, it seems to me that the stratigraphical record is full of examples of processes that are far from “normal” in the usual sense of the word. In particular we must conclude that sedimentation in the past has often been very rapid indeed and very spasmodic. This may be called the “Phenomenon of the Catastrophic Nature of the Stratigraphic Record.”
In The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record (3rd ed., 1993), 70.
I always enjoyed the hearty society of a snowstorm; glad, though solemn, when within a mile or two of safe ground where a storm-nest could be made. Now on this shattered ice I need my eyes, but the snow, gyrating, whirling, and sifting, the very incarnation of spasmodic hysterical mirth, fills them, and I am blinded as if blinded by kisses, delicious in the eye, and sweet.
Journal Entry, while camping on Muir Glacier, Alaska (19? Jul 1890). In John Muir and Linnie Marsh Wolfe (ed.), John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938, 1979), 321.
This beast is best felt. Shake, rattle, and roll. We are thrown left and right against our straps in spasmodic little jerks. It is steering like crazy, like a nervous lady driving a wide car down a narrow alley, and I just hope it knows where it’s going, because for the first ten seconds we are perilously close to that umbilical tower.
…...
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
