The American philosopher Wilfrid Sellars was challenging this assumption when he spoke of "material inferences".
"It tastes like starch," said Ronald A. Smaldone, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern, speaking of the material, made with a sugar, a salt and 190-proof grain alcohol.
Indeed, he seemed to recognize that pure form was imbued with historical and expressive meaning as when he spoke of the "material optimism" that informed Fernand Léger's work and the "existential pessimism" implicit in Pollock's paintings but he never systematically worked out their relationship.
Buckley makes clear that the primary "material" he's speaking of is the grim business of losing two parents in such a short span, but he is also well aware that the elder Buckleys were material, pure and simple.
In an essay, Amit Chaudhuri quotes these sentences, and comments, "When Ray speaks of 'life' and the 'raw material' of life, he is speaking of a refutation of the spectacular that comprises the exotic, in favour of the mundane, the everyday, and the transfiguration of the mundane".
And speaking of risks -- there is perhaps no riskier musical on Broadway, material-wise, than The Visit.
Warner was being spoken of as captaincy material and I know that he talked to Mark Taylor 18 months ago about leadership skills, but I haven't seen much evidence of those so far.
Breaking the pictures' pristine look are the texts that accompany them, in which the young people photographed — all faces are obscured — speak of early abuse, material deprivation and emotional disturbance, realities that jail is likely to extend and exacerbate.
The rows might speak of uniformity, the material might remind us of women's unacknowledged domestic toil, and those shadowy voids within the cowls might signify woman as absence.
The high Middle Ages saw continued use of established techniques for silk manufacture without any changes to speak of, neither in materials nor in tools used.
