  One science can be subalternate to another, according to Grosseteste, in several ways. In one, a science, say Music, the science of audible proportion, falls under another, in this case the science of proportion, but it is not a part of that science, since audibility is an accident of proportion, not a difference which establishes some species of it. Arithmetical and geometrical proportion, for instance, are species of proportion, and so the science of arithmetical or geometrical proportion would be a part of the science of proportion, not subalternate to it. He says in this case that the one science falls under the other univocally, since both are said to deal with proportion. Now audible proportion may be no more than an accidental unity, but it is still the case, Grosseteste holds, that proportion is a necessary formal part of the real nature of harmony, just as its audibility is. So the subject of music, harmony, is, as it were, proportion realized in a certain matter, just as the actual material constitution of a natural object is the realization of some higher form, say that of an animal, the nature of whose functioning can be understood quite independently of the realization of it in that particular matter. Grosseteste sees subalternation as a phenomenon revealing a deep metaphysical truth, the truth that a natural material object is always the realization in matter of some higher form that is what it is quite independently of that realization. So he does not consider the case of the circular wound as subalternation, for circularity in no way constitutes or realizes the function of a wound. Medicine is not even in part subalternate to mathematics. (Grosseteste (1981) I 12, lines 153-198.) In a second case of true subalternation, Grosseteste holds, the science of the parts of a thing, which realize its functioning, must be brought into play to understand the thing. So the science of harmony is subalternate to the science of numbers, Arithmetic, for numbers are the parts of proportions, and must be known if proportions are to be known, even if proportions are not numbers in the way that audible proportions are proportions. So the one science falls under the other “almost univocally.” Similarly, medicine is subalternate to the science of the elements, even though the elements are not strictly parts of the body (not functional parts), since they still enter into its constitution and so must be understood if the body is to be understood.