Conservatives abhor instability, unpredictability, and chaos. Wherever possible we crave consistency, predictability, stability, and peace. But we are not naive enough to believe change will not come. We prefer mostly steady, predictable, limited changes realizing that some changes are inevitable and change societies rapidly.
The devil you know and can live with or the devil you don't know and the risk of collapse and ruin (at both the personal level and the community level)
Those three are not exactly in the same class.
I don't where you get your knowledge about conservatism, but any observant and long-time reader of FR would have run into terms like scientism, reductionism, and how the dislike for the unpredictable gives way to an abuse of reason that goes so far as to eclipse the enigma of human nature itself. Not good.