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Glass: A World History
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Product Description
In Glass: A World History, Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin tell the fascinating story of how glass has revolutionized the way we see ourselves and the world around us. Starting ten thousand years ago with its invention in the Near East, Macfarlane and Martin trace the history of glass and its uses from the ancient civilizations of India, China, and Rome through western Europe during the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Industrial Revolution, and finally up to the present day. The authors argue that glass played a key role not just in transforming humanity's relationship with the natural world, but also in the divergent courses of Eastern and Western civilizations. While all the societies that used glass first focused on its beauty in jewelry and other ornaments, and some later made it into bottles and other containers, only western Europeans further developed the use of glass for precise optics, mirrors, and windows. These technological innovations in glass, in turn, provided the foundations for European domination of the world in the several centuries following the Scientific Revolution.
Clear, compelling, and quite provocative, Glass is an amazing biography of an equally amazing subject, a subject that has been central to every aspect of human history, from art and science to technology and medicine.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #249081 in Books
- Published on: 2002-10-01
- Original language: English
- Dimensions: .91 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 288 pages
Editorial Reviews
From Amazon.com
Imagine a world without glass: no light bulbs, no windshields, no telescopes, no computer screens, and, of course, no glasses. "It is true that other substances, such as wood, bamboo, stone, and clay, can provide shelter and storage," write Alan MacFarlane and Gerry Martin in Glass: A World History. "What is special about glass is that it combines these and many other practical uses with the ability to extend the most potent of our senses, sight, and the most formidable of human organs, the brain." As a piece of technology, however, glass has received almost no previous attention. Nobody knows who invented it, though the ancient Egyptians or Mesopotamians are the likeliest candidates. It wasn't until Europe's early Renaissance, however, that glass was used for something more than mere jewelry and ceramics. It played a vital role in the growth of Western science, marking a key difference between European civilization and civilization everywhere else. "The invention of spectacles [in the 13th century] increased the intellectual life of professional workers by fifteen years or more," say the authors--a development of enormous economic and cultural importance that contributed to "the foundations for European domination over the whole world during the next centuries." This is a bold and beguiling thesis, and it's a wonder that it took until now for somebody to think of it and articulate it so well. --John J. Miller
From Library Journal
MacFarlane (anthropological science, Univ. of Cambridge) and Martin, a historian of glass instruments, make the case for the centrality of glass in the artistic renaissance and scientific revolution that took place in Western Europe from the 14th to 17th centuries. They discuss the origins of glass making and trace its development and usage across centuries and multiple cultures (Europe, the Middle East, China, India, and Japan). Their discussion combines cultural, artistic, and aesthetic viewpoints of glass within these cultures with history and developments in science. The result is a thoroughly readable, carefully argued work, filled with delightful surprises (such as the discussion on eyeglasses, vision, and art). An excellent example of microhistory (think Mark Kurlansky's Cod), this is required for history of science collections and recommended for large public and academic collections. [See also William Ellis's Glass: From the First Mirror to Fiber Optics; The Story of the Substance That Changed the World.-Ed.]-Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences Inc., RTP, N.
--Michael D. Cramer, Schwarz BioSciences Inc., RTP, NC
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
At the beginning of this sophisticated query into the importance of glassmaking, the authors imagine our civilization without glass: lab work stops; window frames stand empty; vessels become opaque. Macfarlane and Martin then argue that glassmaking was critical in bringing about Renaissance painting and the scientific revolution. They also suggest that the inferiority of glassmaking in India, China, and Japan was a factor in the failure of science and realistic art to take root in those civilizations. Claims of such embracing historical causation require convincing evidence, which the authors interestingly present, hinging on the glass industry of early modern Venice, birthplace of transparent crystal glass. From that time on, light was seen in new and shimmering ways by artists such as Brunelleschi, telescope and microscope users, and those who bought window glass and mirrors. To examine glass' reception in East Asia, the authors discuss artwork, which tended to remain symbolic and without perspective, venturing anthropological reasons for this stasis. A novel and inquisitive examination of a common but remarkable technology. Gilbert Taylor
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