Dear Derek, Margaret and Luc,

You all might appreciate this 'anecdote'.
In 1870 Karl Marx attended a massive exhibit on classical Greek pottery (Attic, 6th-5th centuries BCE, the eternally fetishized black-on-orange and orange-on-black) held in the British Museum. After imbibing his full (Marx was a passionate Hellenist) he wrote a letter to Engels. In that letter, Marx expressed the following deep concern (which, in fact, explodes the whole of the Marxist project when we think about it).

To wit: Marx was confident that his theory could explain why the Athenians produced the sort of pottery that they did. What was keeping him up at nights was what his theory could not explain: why 25 centuries later, we continued to find the pottery so beautiful.

Eric