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Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Photo source: Wikimedia Commons, Photographeroflife
Photo license: CC BY-SA 3.0
What is a subject? I have three definitions:
1. A subject is a branch of knowledge
2. A subject is a part of a sentence being described
3. A subject is a being that is perceiving
The rest of this post is an explanation of each definition.
1. A subject is a branch of knowledge
I believe its interesting how society has divided up knowledge into our major subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, history, literature, mathematics, economics, philosophy, psychology and sociology. Of course this is not an exhaustive list, but I believe these are the most common subjects found in education systems around the world. Sometimes I wonder if there would be a better list of subjects to study or if reality is inherently set up this way.
2. A subject is a part of a sentence being described
I believe that all sentences have at least one subject-predicate pair. The subject is the thing being described, while the predicate is the description. Sometimes the subject is implied. For example, if I said, "Go to Seattle" the implied subject is the person I'm talking to. Regardless, I can't think of a single sentence that doesn't have a subject.
3. A subject is a being that perceives
The third definition has to do with the subject-object relationship. In this regard, the subject is the being that consciously observes something. The object is the phenomena that is observed. I also believe that the entirety of life experience is nothing but a series of subject-object relationships.
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
