On The Algebra of Logic (1885)
Context: Any character or proposition either concerns one subject, two subjects, or a plurality of subjects. For example, one particle has mass, two particles attract one another, a particle revolves about the line joining two others. A fact concerning two subjects is a dual character or relation; but a relation which is a mere combination of two independent facts concerning the two subjects may be called degenerate, just as two lines are called a degenerate conic. In like manner a plural character or conjoint relation is to be called degenerate if it is a mere compound of dual characters.
A sign is in a conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind. If this triple relation is not of a degenerate species, the sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends upon a habit. Such signs are always abstract and general, because habits are general rules to which the organism has become subjected. They are, for the most part, conventional or arbitrary. They include all general words, the main body of speech, and any mode of conveying a judgment. For the sake of brevity I will call them tokens.
Compare Galileo, "...for my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly. If, not being subject to any changes... I should deem it a useless lump in the universe, devoid of activity and, in a word, superfluous and essentially non-existent." Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.12
Source: Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952), Persecution and the Art of Writing, p. 36
“Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring.”
XIII. A Guide to Boring
A Conversation with a Cat, and Others (1931)
“As one learns the language of a subject, one is also learning what the subject is.”
Language Education in a Knowledge Context (1980)
Context: As one learns the language of a subject, one is also learning what the subject is.... what we call a subject consists mostly, if not entirely, of its language. If you eliminate all the words of a subject, you have eliminated the subject.
To Ulysses S. Grant on why black U.S. soldiers were not be repatriated by the Confederacy, as quoted in Liberty, Equality, Power: Enhanced Concise Edition https://books.google.com/books?id=1w5Qp4qYfE0C&pg=PA433#v=onepage&q&f=false (2009), California: Cengage Learning, p. 433
1860s
“Motives do not concern me; they are a dangerous subject with which to deal.”
Whelan v. Palmer (1888), L. J. Rep. (N. S.) 57 C. D. 788.
The Rediscovery of the Mind, p. 97, MIT Press (1992) ISBN 0-262-69154-X.
Source: Structured analysis (SA): A language for communicating ideas (1977), p. 19.
"Subjective and Objective," in Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press, 1979, p. 196.
