Customer Reviews

Glass: A World History

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When I bought the book, I was more or less expecting a history of how glass was made and the development of glass through history. I was mistaken.
It is a narrative of how glass influenced history. Without glass the Renaissance and the Age of Science could not have happened.
A fascinating and informative history of the world as influenced by glass.

Glass is a wonderful material for making vessels to drink out of, but its real importance is the role that it played in the early industrial revolution. Clear glass made such instruments as the microscope, the telescope, the barometer, and the various forms of chemical laboratory vessels possible and until the invention of transparent synthetic polymers, was just about the only material that could serve.

Macfarlane and Martin ably examine the importance of the material in making possible the historical advances that were shaped by the availability of transparent glass, and convincingly show that it was well nigh essential, and we would still all be sitting around a campfire in a cave if someone had not had the good luck to discover it.

One of his more interesting theories is that the discovery really took hold because of the demand pull for it in house windows in cooler climes, and that this is why the industrial revolution had its origin in Northern Europe, rather than the Arab world with its predilection for cooling breezes. More glass for windows means less expensive laboratory glassware and other scientific instruments. Perhaps there is something to this, but I suspect there were some other factors at work as well.

This little book is an entertaining read for those interested in thinking about the broad forces that shaped our modern world and its technology. They do, though, go a little overboard at times, and the section on myopia in the orient is positively over the top.

This book has no detail to offer about early glassmaking, how it affected everyday lives of rich and poor, its effects on trade and culture . . . It doesn't even say what glass is.

The authors are interested in linking glass to a few well established themes of Western Civilization courses, such as the rise of the individual and the scientific revolution. Example: Is it coincidence that the great scientific minds of the medieval period were all men of the church, which for the last few centuries had been using a lot of stained glass? (The authors acknowledge that the church monopoly on higher education may help to explain this astonishing coincidence.) The discussion seems never to get beyond a few supporting quotations, and a cavalcade of disclaimers.

For a good history of glass, we may have to wait for Henry Petroski (Evolution of Useful Things) to write one.

GLASS: A WORLD HISTORY, Macfarlane and Martin, University of Chicago Press, 2002

What a magnificent book! What an amazing thesis! Here, artfully and clearly presented by the authors, is the idea that this taken for granted miracle substance, all around us in the current day - in the form of drinking glasses, jars and bowls, eyeglasses, mirrors, TV screens, computer monitors, camera and telescope and microscope lenses, windows, petri dishes and test tubes - is the chief driver of modernity.

Yes, from its tribal discovery and development in Mesopotamia some 4,500 years ago, this translucent, moldable, durable, and highly refractive substance has transformed our world. Its reach and versatility has penetrated and enhanced all areas of our life - just think about the light bulb, and how humans now can read and write and play and do oh so many things without serious regard to dark fall.

Nor does it stop with lighting. Just think about transportation (car, train, plane windows) or shelter (windows for houses and buildings). Think about optics. Think about how optics, in itself, has led to biological science and medicine (where would Louis Pasteur, and all those who came after him, be without the microscope?). Think about how optics allows people (like me!) with aging eyes to read, and for others, all manner of other optical correction (I know, I know, you'll say, today these lenses are plastic, but were it not for glass, the field of optics - involving an understanding of curvature, refraction, lens making, etc. - plastic lenses would have been much much later in the making.)

Indeed, the computer upon which I type this review would not have been possible without glass. The early transistors, later integrated circuits, computer processing, monitors, the trunk lines today through which information passes, all dependant on silica based "life forms" Indeed, silica, the essential ingredient of glass (glass is SiO2 - silicon dioxide), and its various compounds, is in everything electronic, in one form or another. And it is frankly and explicitly in the glass fiber used in high speed digital processing. Our information age would not be if not for glass. Glass magically and durably allows for the transmission of light, for the tallying of its photonic particles, and their reinterpretation into meaningful bits of information known as words or as images on the myriad screens that proliferate today in this, the Information Age.

The Information Age is the Glass Age, and this is the book that gets you thinking about that, about the sweeping impact of glass on our world. And of course we are still evolving, culturally, and technologically, at break-neck speed, and glass continues to be a fundamental part of this evolution.

This book is a must read for any thinking, curious person. It should be high on the list for those interested in the history or philosophy of science, the nature of technology, information processing, and cultural evolution. It should be of interest for anyone interested in craft and the relationship of creativity and technology. It should be of interest for anyone enthralled by the beauty of glass, entranced by its colors, and the way light plays in and through it. Artists and technologists alike can take de-light in what Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin have to say.

There was a Bronze Age, and then an Iron Age, but now, if one thinks a bit on the material presented in this seminal work, the Age of Glass spans nearly this whole time period as well. Yet, unlike bronze and iron, the importance of glass and other silica based compounds continues along, at the cutting edge, in fact, of our cultural and technological unfolding.

Disclaimer: The writer of this review, Harlan Simon of harlanglass.com, is an avowed and self-confessed glass-evangelist (bet you couldn't tell!). He is an amateur glass historian, and a professional jewelry designer, glassmaker, and teacher. He offers ongoing glassmaking workshops at the City of Oakland's public art studio, Studio One, which is Northern California's longest continuously running public flamework glass program. On the Web, there are numerous YouTube and Expertillage.com how-to videos depicting Harlan teaching various glass beadmaking techniques of the ancient art known as flamework. And during the summer, Harlan teaches several retreat-type glass beadmaking workshops at Feather River Art Camp near Quincy CA and at the beautiful Mendocino Art Center on the rugged Northern California coast.

Harlan passionately shares the view of the authors of Glass: A World History (indeed learning much of it from them) of the transformative nature of glass. And he is working (slowly!) on a further development of their thesis of the pivotal, epoch-making nature of glass. Indeed, expanding upon the line of thought brought forth by Macfarlane and Martin, of the influence of glass on western art and science (realistic portrayal of a 3-D world in 2-D, the empiricism of the scientific method, etc.), Harlan is of the further view that perhaps even the concept of the "self," both in the realm of psychology as well as in modern political theory (Locke, Rousseau, French Revolution, Rights of Man, and the founding of American Democracy), can also be traced to the impact of Glass. There is a speculative idea here as well, which relates to light and mind, energy and thought, and involves questions about what the "big picture" purpose of glass is. Harlan's work concludes with some tentative answers as to what the Reign of the Age of Glass might be about and what it ultimately means for us.

I thought this book would be more technical, with more details about glass itself. It's really just about the Renaissance and Greek revival. I can remember reading many pages without the word 'glass' even being mentioned! If I wanted to discuss the origins of science, I would have read a book titled that, not a book called "Glass". I expected the book to actually be about glass! I'm actually dreading finishing this book.