# Philosophy of Material Culture Chapters 5-6 **Opening (not a real abstract):** However well one has grasped the utility of some physiological organ (or of a legal institution, a social custom, a political practice, a form in the arts or in religious cult), one has still not comprehended anything regarding its genesis: as uncomfortable and unpleasant as this may sound to earlier ears—for from time immemorial one had thought that in comprehending the demonstrable purpose, the usefulness of a thing, a form, an arrangement, one also comprehended the reason for its coming into being—the eye as made to see, the hand as made to grasp. Thus one also imagined punishment as invented for punishing. But all purposes, all utilities, are only signs that a will to power has become lord over something less powerful and has stamped its own functional meaning onto it; and in this manner the entire history of a ‘thing,’ an **Authors:** [[Beth Preston]]