Primitive World

Tanning of hides by any of the primitive methods was a dirty job withHttle assurance of success. The tanner was a speciaUst generating little respect in the community. In some parts of the world, this ancient prejudice against tanners exists even as of this writing (ca 1994). The tanner in primitive societies was limited to making leather using the hides or skins available locally. Tanning materials were also limited to those in local supply. Techniques were dependent on the climate as well as avadabihty of materials. The leather made was for local needs. 

One of the reasons the tribes of early history were nomadic was to move periodically away from the stench of the animal, vegetable, and human wastes they generated. When the tribesmen learned to use fire, they used it for millennia in a way that filled the air inside their living quarters with the products of incomplete combustion. Examples of this can still be seen today in some of fhe more primitive parts of the world. After its invention, the chimney removed the combustion products and cooking smells from the living quarters, but for centuries the open fire in the fireplace caused its emission to be smoky. In ad 61 the Roman philosopher Seneca reported thus on conditions in Rome ... 

P should also minimize distinction.s between conventionally distinct but atomic. primitives (such as space, mass, time, etc.). The vision is to take one more step along the metaphoric road remove jnan from the center of the universe —> remove all privileged frames of reference —> remove all absolutes —> remove all distinction between space and matter—r remove all distinction ( ) Start by eliminating the tacit assumption that whatever physics is self-organizing itself out of the soup of the current crop of physicists is the physics of this universe in short, go from a solipsistic phys-ics to a fundamentally relativistic physics, wherein even physics itself becomes a set (an infinite hierarchical set ) of self-consistent world-views rather than a prescribed set of exactly/uniquely prescribed laws operating independently of all observers. 

The RNA world hypothesis caused prebiotic phosphate chemistry to become an attractive research area again unfortunately, no clear evidence for a realistic nucleotide synthesis under the simplified conditions of a primitive Earth has yet appeared. Important work on nucleoside phosphorylation has, however, been done. It is important to distinguish between ... 

Sour dough bread is made all over the world in both primitive and advanced societies. In primitive societies there is no alternative, but in advanced societies sour dough bread is made for its special flavour. Sour... 

Olfaction, once thought to be a primitive sense, is now recognized as an elaborate sensory system that deploys a large family of odorant receptors to analyse the chemical environment. Interactions between these receptors and their diverse natural binding molecules (ligands) translate the world of odors into a neural code. Humans have about 350 odorant receptors. Rodents have more than a thousand. 

For New York Dada in general, see, besides Green (an excellent contextual study), Tashjian, Skyscraper Primitives and New York Dada. Unfortunately, Arensberg never seems to have written anything substantial about his adventures in the New York art world, nor, for that matter, anything specific about his philosophy of art. 

Anderson, W. T. Reality Isn t What It Used to Be Theatrical Politics, Ready to Wear Religion, Primitive Chic, and Other Wonders of the Postmodern World. New York HarperCollins, 1990. 

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