  This account of subordination was intimately connected with Grosseteste's metaphysics. He thought that the material world arose from light, which propagates itself in a straight line through space, so that matter can only be understood as arising from light in accord with mathematical laws. Thus natural science will be subalternate to mathematics, for even though mathematics is not the science of the higher form, of light, considered in itself, it does govern the way in which light realizes itself in space. The fact that the science of nature depends on mathematics is a clue that the natural world originates from a higher form in accord with mathematics. Similarly, a living being comes about when a higher form lends functions of digestion, reproduction, sensation and the like to matter, these functions being accomplished by the causal operations of matter, so that the biological sciences are subalternate to natural science.