Ferro e cobre em Ward (1919)

Empirical art consists chiefly in making useful things. It is what I characterized in Chapter V by the term poesis. It deals mostly with different substances found in the region inhabited by the artisan. It has mainly to do with properties as distinguished from forces. These known properties are perceived to contain utilities, and by the appropriate transformation of the substances these utilities are realized. One of the most universal of these substances is clay, and the potter’s art, which is very early and widespread, is a typical empirical art. All arts are attended with labor, which is chiefly expended in multiplying the products of a single art, often with slavish adherence to a fixed pattern. But a certain degree of satisfaction attends the making of an artificial thing, and Mr. Veblen’s “instinct of workmanship” sustains many a weary hour of toil. But the making of tools and weapons contributed much more to the conquest of nature than did the culinary and domestic arts, and this form of art was much more frequently intrusted to men, women being the principal primitive potters. Tools, first of rough, then of polished stone, then of copper (usually, but probably erroneously called bronze by archaeologists), and at last of iron after the art of extracting iron from its ores had been acquired, have been the marks, and their quality the measures of culture in the progress of the race. (Ward 1919:513)

WARD, Lester. 1919. Pure sociology: a treatise on the origin and spontaneous development of society. New York: The Macmillan Company.