Accustomed as we are to wearing clothes and to using colors in artistic and utilitarian ways, we often forget that the first “monument” offered to color is the human body and that the first “canvas” for the artist was his own skin. Man has created a distance between skin and colors by introducing clothes, which have a meaning that works to the detriment of both skin and colors. Clothes are a kind of second skin which is far more versatile than the first one and with which tailors and fashion designers may cheat to the full extent of their fantasy and in accordance with how we wish to appear. Colors play an infinite game of combinations which enhance and transform clothes. No skin lends itself to such a range of aesthetic manipulations as cloth does.

Communications research and theory has its origins in the development of the media of communication, particularly mass media. In the beginning, starting around the turn of the century, studies of mass communication were occasional exercises carried out from the traditional bases of history, law, etc. But as the social importance of mass communication increased with mass-circulated commercial press and particularly after the introduction of radio broadcasting in the twenties, this field of social communications research began to grow and take shape. First it was usually associated with particular media, like German Zeitungswissenschaft (‘Newspaper science’) or American ‘radio research.’ The latter was strongly stimulated by the market needs of rapidly expanding commercial broadcasting which in this form of audience research at the same time served as the main force to develop general public opinion surveys. Gradually, however, media-bound approaches were replaced by a more general view of the mass media; in the German area this development led between the wars to the emergence of Publizistik (‘Science of public communication’) while the concept of ‘communication research’ broke through in the American arena towards the end of the forties (significantly enough, Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues even changed the title of their series ‘Radio Research’ into ‘Communication Research’).

History is the child of narrative. It is not defined by an object of study, but rather by a type of narration. To say that history studies time means no more than that it arranges all of its objects of study in a temporal framework: to make history is to tell a story.

Perhaps modern man's major mistake was that of considering science as the quintessence of reason and of believing, accordingly, that scientific progress is synonymous with human progress.

The debate prompted by Meyer Fortes in his account Oedipus and Job in West-African Religions is valuable for its insight into the peoples of the Black Continent. In fact, if the basic motivations behind the two cited mythical stories can be discerned to any extent among the Tallensi of Ghana, and also, as the author suggests, within many other ethnic groups, it will be easier to establish characteristics common to all mankind, the elements of similarity being of a more primordial and significant nature than the differentiating factors. On the other hand, if the evidence is not convincing, or if the examples selected by the researcher are disputed by the outsider—who might for instance contest their long-term validity or universality—this might imply that the differences are predominant without their invalidating the overall possibility of there being a good number of common features.

The League of Arab States, concerned by the diverse reactions caused in the Arab world by the publication of Antoine С. Mattar's article, “The Arabic Language and Present Conditions and Prospects for the Future of the Arabic-Speaking World” in Diogenes No. 83 (Fall 1973), pages 64-76, has sent to the editors of the magazine their response, published below, which was prepared at their request by Dr. Abdel Sabbour Chahine and which represents their point of view. The editors of Diogenes are very pleased to publish their answer and remind its readers that the opinions published are the sole responsibility of the author and the League of Arab States.