In modern civilized communities... the members of each stratum accept as their ideal of decency the scheme of life in vogue in the next higher stratum. Thorstein Veblen
In the snobbery of science, each branch attempts to rise in the social scale by imitating the methods of the next higher science and by ignoring the methods and phenomena of the sciences beneath. Gilbert N. Lewis
The Master created humans first as the lowest type, most easily formed. Gradually, he replaced them by robots, the next higher step, and finally he created me, to take the place of the last humans. Isaac Asimov