set in opposition

They sometimes provoke amazement that art, often set in opposition to science, can be explained by numbers.

It is a rhetorical tactic that is, in fact, most at home on the left, where personal stories of grievance and oppression are typically set in opposition to the status quo in the wider society.

To that, add advisers with tangible and ideological ties to a global movement set in opposition to American pluralism and liberal democracy.

“This Is Hot 97” — a charming trifle on VH1 set in opposition to that channel’s other hip-hop-theme reality programming, like the reliably raucous “Love & Hip Hop” and its offspring — is a workplace comedy masquerading as a hip-hop-insider tour masquerading as a reality show, and not particularly successful at any of them.

The fuller our knowledge of reality the more does the object stand out as an invulnerable system of ordered parts, but the process by which it is thus set in opposition to the subject is also the process by which we understand and transform it into the substance of our own thought.