Sentence examples for merely instruments from inspiring English sources

In the first half of the twentieth century, however, empiricism came predominantly in the form of varieties of "instrumentalism": the view that theories are merely instruments for predicting observable phenomena or systematizing observation reports.

They were vessels for solidarity, often very conservative, and not merely instruments of political agitation.

Theories and theoretical concepts, according to positivist understanding, were merely instruments of prediction.

But both the I.M.F. and the World Bank still have much to do to build trust among emerging markets and make a convincing case that they are not merely instruments of the rich economies.

He did not mean the time of clocks or calendars or hour-glasses; those were merely instruments of convenience for fixing points at which to have coffee, or feed the cat.

Value-individualists, for instance, contend that only individual persons ultimately matter morally, and thus, while political states may be extremely valuable instruments, they are merely instruments and, as such, are not the type of entities to which we can sensibly ascribe moral rights.

The main characters' fate isn't merely to die; it's also to live as the mere instruments of others.

Though supposedly merely the instruments of investigation, they really hold all the effective power, reporting to no one save God, or their own ambition.

According to this perspective, morality and politics are merely the instruments through which each individual attempts to secure such goods for himself.

Their muses are merely the instruments that raise the emotional and erotic temperature high enough, churn up the weather in a way that may speed and facilitate the artist's labors".

Later, however, as individuals became more firmly sorted into sovereign states and the regulation of warfare through treaties between states became increasingly effective, the theory began to conceive of war as an activity of states, in which individual soldiers were merely the instruments through which states acted.