Subordinate Quotes (11 quotes)
[The body of law] has taxed the deliberative spirit of ages. The great minds of the earth have done it homage. It was the fruit of experience. Under it men prospered, all the arts flourished, and society stood firm. Every right and duty could be understood because the rules regulating each had their foundation in reason, in the nature and fitness of things; were adapted to the wants of our race, were addressed to the mind and to the heart; were like so many scraps of logic articulate with demonstration. Legislation, it is true occasionally lent its aid, but not in the pride of opinion, not by devising schemes inexpedient and untried, but in a deferential spirit, as a subordinate co-worker.
From biographical preface by T. Bigelow to Austin Abbott (ed.), Official Report of the Trial of Henry Ward Beecher (1875), Vol. 1, xii.
Chemistry is the study of the effects of heat and mixture, with a view of discovering their general and subordinate laws, and of improving the useful arts.
This is an editor’s shorter restatement of the definition given by Black in the first of a series of lectures on chemistry, collected in John Robison (ed.), Lectures on the Elements of Chemistry: Delivered in the University of Edinburgh (1807), Vol. 1, 11, footnote. For the definitions as given by Black, see elsewhere on this web page.
Mathematics is a science of Observation, dealing with reals, precisely as all other sciences deal with reals. It would be easy to show that its Method is the same: that, like other sciences, having observed or discovered properties, which it classifies, generalises, co-ordinates and subordinates, it proceeds to extend discoveries by means of Hypothesis, Induction, Experiment and Deduction.
In Problems of Life and Mind: The Method of Science and its Application (1874), 423-424. [The reals are the relations of magnitude.]
Of our three principal instruments for interrogating Nature,—observation, experiment, and comparison,—the second plays in biology a quite subordinate part. But while, on the one hand, the extreme complication of causes involved in vital processes renders the application of experiment altogether precarious in its results, on the other hand, the endless variety of organic phenomena offers peculiar facilities for the successful employment of comparison and analogy.
In 'University Reform', Darwinism and Other Essays (1893), 302.
One always finds among men who are reputed to be reasonable some evidence of this tendency to inquire into the reason of things; of this desire to know not simply how things are, but why they are one way rather than another; and, consequently, of this awareness of a relation which is not gained through the senses, this notion of an abstract bond by virtue of which one thing is subordinated to another which determines and explains it.
From Essai sur les Fondements de nos Connaissances et sur les Caractères de la Critique Philosophique (1851), 21, as translated by Merritt H Moore in An Essay on the Foundations of Our Knowledge (1956), 18. From the original French: “Toujours est-il que, chez tous les hommes réputés raisonnables, on retrouve, à certains degrés, cette tendance à s’enquérir de la raison des choses; ce désir de connaître, non pas seulement comment les choses sont, mais pourquoi elles sont de telle façon plutôt que d’une autre; et, partant, cette intelligence d’un rapport qui ne tombe pas sous les sens; cette notion d’un lien abstrait en vertu duquel une chose est subordonnée à une autre qui la détermine et qui l’explique.”
Since in reality there is nothing to which growth is relative save more growth, there is nothing to which education is subordinate save more education.
Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (1916), 60.
The Excellence of Modern Geometry is in nothing more evident, than in those full and adequate Solutions it gives to Problems; representing all possible Cases in one view, and in one general Theorem many times comprehending whole Sciences; which deduced at length into Propositions, and demonstrated after the manner of the Ancients, might well become the subjects of large Treatises: For whatsoever Theorem solves the most complicated Problem of the kind, does with a due Reduction reach all the subordinate Cases.
In 'An Instance of the Excellence of Modern Algebra, etc', Philosophical Transactions, 1694, 960.
The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.
From 'Auctoris Præfatio', Principia Mathematica (1687). As translated by Andrew Motte in 'Author’s Preface', The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1729), Vol. 1, first page of the Preface, unpaginated. From the original Latin: “Cum Veteres Mechanicam (uti Auctor est Pappus) in rerum Naturalium investigatione maximi fecerint, & Recentiores, missis formis substantialibus & qualitatibus occultis, Phenomena Naturæ ad leges Mathematicas revocare aggressi sint : Visum est in hoc Tractatu Mathesin excolere quatenus ea ad Philosophiam spectat.”
We are not to consider the world as the body of God: he is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts; and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to his will.
From 'Query 31', Opticks (1704, 2nd ed., 1718), 379.
We may conclude that from what science teaches us, there is in nature an order independent of man's existence, a meaningful order to which nature and man are subordinate.
Sometimes seen attributed (doubtfully?) to Max Planck. Widely seen on the web, but always without citation. Webmaster has not yet found any evidence in print that this is a valid Planck quote, and must be skeptical that it is. Contact Webmaster if you know a primary source.
With highly civilised nations continued progress depends in a subordinate degree on natural selection; for such nations do not supplant and exterminate one another as do savage tribes. Nevertheless the more intelligent members within the same community will succeed better in the long run than the inferior, and leave a more numerous progeny, and this is a form of natural selection.
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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) -- 
