Back Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic
D. Murali
An independent country self-governs, and an independent witness is not connected with another, though Charles de Gaulle once remarked, "No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent." Also, colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent, said Benjamin Disraeli, because there can be newer dependencies.
An independent legislator has not political party affiliation, which makes him or her capable of tilting the power balance, especially if the public mandate is fractured. "An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics," said Adlai E. Stevenson. Not so in India, where the politics of the independents often overshadows the main characters. "War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means," said Karl Von Clausewitz. Elections are probably only a different war; because politics continues through horse-trading.
"Not dependent; not subject to the control of others; not subordinate. God is the only being who is perfectly independent," states Webster's 1828 Dictionary as the meaning of independent; but it may be difficult to get Him on company boards, I guess. The line from Shakespeare's Cymbeline, "On whom there is no more dependency," is effectively about independency. A man of independent means has enough to be free from "the necessity of working for a living," says Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants, is an insight of William Cobbett worth remembering.
"Each wheel has an independent suspension system," is an example on Encarta to define independent as being able to function by itself. You are independent if "capable of thinking or acting without consultation with or guidance from others." Independent food store, and independent film are given in the American Heritage Dictionary to illustrate what are `not dependent on or affiliated with a larger or controlling entity'.
Economists talk of independent demand to refer to demand that is independent of the production process, as in the case of demand for car spares. Independent retailer is a small retailer, generally owning between one and nine shops, as per Oxford Dictionary of Business. `Independent intermediary' acts as a representative of a prospective policyholder in the insurance market. IFA is independent financial adviser is "not committed to the products of any one company", so he is expected to offer best advice. `Find an independent financial adviser' beckons www.unbiased.co.uk, while AIFA is the Association of Independent Financial Advisors.
"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising," is a quote of Pauline Kael that advertises the virtues of the critic. A lament of Edgar R. Fiedler is, "The herd instinct among forecasters makes sheep look like independent thinkers." It is not rare therefore, that independence is often sacrificed for narrower goals. Mahalia Jackson would explain, "It is easy to be independent when you've got money. But to be independent when you haven't got a thing, that's the Lord's test."
The Web site www.ultralingua.net uses the word in phrases such as `an independent mind', `a series of independent judgments', and `an independent republic' to explain what are free from external control and constraint. If you can be serious, "Joking apart, we need to go now," is a sentence that is analysed by language site to explain: "The words `joking apart' are syntactically independent." In grammar, an independent clause is a clause in a sentence that would form a complete sentence by itself, educates http://dictionary.cambridge.org. "An independent contractor is a person who agrees to do a particular job for someone else for an agreed amount of money but who is not an employee." Independent, as military jargon explained at www.dtic.mil, is "a merchant ship under naval control sailed singly and unescorted by a warship." Mine which is not controlled by the user after laying is `independent mine'. An arbitrary family of random variables is independent if every finite subfamily is independent, according to http://planetmath.org.
If you find that confusing, `Misunderstood Physics Terms' at www.lhup.edu notes, "Much confusion exists about the meanings of dependent and independent variables." It adds, "If you write a function or relation in the form y = f(x), y is considered dependent on x and x is said to be the independent variable."
Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment states that each member of a pair of homologous chromosomes separates independently of the members of other pairs so the results are random. Wonder if this applied to how alliances get forged after polls. In business, an independent business refers to what is privately owned as opposed to those publicly owned through a distribution of shares on the market, explains Wikipedia. "A sole-proprietorship is the most common form of independent business."
The word has religious meaning too. "In English church history, Independents advocated local congregational control of religious and church matters, without any wider geographical hierarchy, either ecclesiastical or political." If you can handle a bit of logic, try the disambiguation page at http://en.wikipedia.org. "Hope is independent of the apparatus of logic," Norman Cousins alerts.
Let us look for `depend' in Online Etymology Dictionary. "1413, `to be attached to as a condition or cause,' fig. use, from M.Fr. dependre `to hang from, hang down,' from Latin dependere, from de- `from, down' + pendere `to hang, be suspended'," it reads. Well, there hangs the tale that what is independent doesn't hang, but there's more in `pendant', the dangling part of an earring, with a reference to `span' that in turn speaks of Latin pondus (from pendere, to weigh) meaning `weight' (the weight of a thing measured by how much it stretches a cord). Look up pendere at www.etymonline.com and you'd find: poise (weight, significance), stipend (stips, `alms, small payment' + pendere, `weigh'), pendulum, pension, pensive, expend, suspend, pending, dispense, append, compendium (compendere, to weigh together), perpendicular (perpendere, balance carefully), peso and compensate.
"A person's worth is quite independent of their usefulness to society," said Kjell Magne Bondevik. A thought that may apply to independent directors too; their worth, one may argue, is independent of their usefulness to the company.
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