Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible New Ed Edition

by Joseph A. Amato (Author), Abigail Rorer (Illustrator), Jeffrey Burton Russell (Foreword)

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ISBN-13: 978-0520231955

ISBN-10: 0520231953

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While the story of the big has often been told, the story of the small has not yet even been outlined. With Dust, Joseph Amato enthralls the reader with the first history of the small and the invisible. Dust is a poetic meditation on how dust has been experienced and the small has been imagined across the ages. Examining a thousand years of Western civilization―from the naturalism of medieval philosophy, to the artistry of the Renaissance, to the scientific and industrial revolutions, to the modern worlds of nanotechnology and viral diseases―Dust offers a savvy story of the genesis of the microcosm.

Dust, which fills the deepest recesses of space, pervades all earthly things. Throughout the ages it has been the smallest yet the most common element of everyday life. Of all small things, dust has been the most minute particulate the eye sees and the hand touches. Indeed, until this century, dust was simply accepted as a fundamental condition of life; like darkness, it marked the boundary between the seen and the unseen.

With the full advent of scientific discovery, technological innovation, and social control, dust has been partitioned, dissected, manipulated, and even invented. In place of traditional and generic dust, a highly diverse particulate has been discovered and examined. Like so much else that was once considered minute, dust has been magnified by the twentieth-century transformations of our conception of the small. These transformations―which took form in the laboratory through images of atoms, molecules, cells, and microbes―defined anew not only dust and the physical world but also the human body and mind. Amato dazzles the reader with his account of how this powerful microcosm challenges the imagination to grasp the magnitude of the small, and the infinity of the finite.

Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000

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Editorial Reviews

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"Amato melds social, medical, and political history with concepts of hygiene, public policy, and natural sciences--all in the name of dust."--"Science News

About the Author

Joseph A. Amato is Dean of Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State University in Marshall, Minnesota. Some of his most recent titles include Golf Beats Us All (So We Love It) (1997); The Decline of Rural Minnesota (1993); The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus: The Buying and Selling of the American Rural Dream (1993); and Victims and Values: A History and Theory of Suffering (1990).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From the first chapter

Mothered by the same earth, dust and dirt have different fathers. Dust--finer and more discrete--belongs as much to air as to earth. Dirt--bigger and clumsier--is identified with soil. When wet, dirt reveals a closer kinship to water than to dust. But dirt's real father, which vouches for its closer affinity to the soil, is muck or, to be more precise, excrement. this book is much more about dust than dirt; it is about dust's role as a condition of life and as a measure of the small until the start of the century.

Once, not so long ago, dust constituted the finest thing the human eye could see. In the form of gold dust or pollen, as light filaments that covered the skin, or as individual particles that spun int he sunlight, dust was the most minuscule thing people encountered. Like darkness and skin, dust was an omnipresent boundary, in this case between the visible and the invisible. In advanced twentieth-century society, visible dust has been removed from the surface of most things, and the kingdom of dust has been opened to examination by scientific instruments. it has been studied, regulated in industry and society, and controlled in dwellings, in public buildings, and on the streets. Dust, always varied in composition, is now seen as a highly diverse particulate and a matter of sub-microscopic exactness. Along with so many other minute things of the preindustrial world, dust has been swept to the edges of contemporary society and, thus, to the margins of contemporary consciousness. As with all that was once considered really small, dust has been redefined by a great twentieth-century revolution--a revolution of the minuscule. Denied the intellectual fanfare of the astronomical revolution, which removed the earth from the center of the universe and declared the universe infinite, this revolution of the petite declared the infinity of the infinitesimal. It has forced humans to recognize the immensity and might of the small. For the first time ever, at least for those with inquisitive minds, the world below became as vast, fascinating, and powerful as the heavens above.

The roots of this revolution lie in early modern history, with the development of finely made human goods and the first microscopic perceptions of reality. It has been sustained with the discovery of microbes and the diagnosis and cure of viral and bacterial diseases; the reading of DNA and the deciphering of genes; and the division and fusion of atoms. Among its consequences was the end of the perennial identification of dust and smallness.

Paperback: 262 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; New Ed edition (November 5, 2001)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520231953
ISBN-13: 978-0520231955
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Customer Reviews: 11 customer ratings
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,170,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #22272 in Science & Mathematics
- #6191 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
- #29114 in Nature & Ecology (Books)

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Silver

Not for scientific use

Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2007

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This book was not useful for the purpose I had hoped: it is not a source of scientific reference information.

3 people found this helpful

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AnakaliaKlemm

Philosophy, not science

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2019

I was VERY excited about this book. And it started out wonderfully, so promising! There were even a smattering of beautiful illustrations of small creatures known to reside in dust, which is right up my alley. Then it derailed into theories and modern commentary on germs and such, seemingly to reach a word count. I’d rather read science than political and social commentary.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but the conclusion went on far longer than necessary. Where I started the book excited and engaged, I ended it bored, with a sigh of relief.

That being said, if I ever wrote a nonfiction piece even half so interesting, I’d probably be pretty pleased with myself. I hope, regardless of my opinion, that Joseph A. Amato is pleased with himself – and I don’t say that lightly or sarcastically. He is a professor of Intellectual and Cultural History, so it is most appropriate that his book took the turn that it did, but I was still hoping for more of something a microbiologist would write.

I have in my possession a first edition hardback in near mint condition that I do plan to keep. I find the size and marketing of the book quite lovely, and the pages are high quality and the best texture. It is the little things I appreciate most, and for this title specifically I find that pleasingly appropriate.

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Harry Eagar

The downfall of dust

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2008

Dust has had a mixed status, from the worthless dust we shook from our sandals as we left town to gold dust and pixie dust. Until the 19th century it was surprisingly important. It was the limit of the small.
And, writes cultural historian Joseph Amato, in the old days "in times before industry . . . men and women were intimate with dust in ways beyond contemporary imagination."
Amato is also an intellectual historian, and while wearing that hat he points out that "a grain of house dust is roughly halfway in size between a subatomic particle and the planet Earth."
Clearly, there is more to dust than just . . . particles.
For a long time, according to "Dust." dust was the smallest thing humans knew of and something they could not control, no matter how much damage it caused to life and health.
Peasants inevitably wallowed in dust, and its less reputable cousin dirt, but the aristocrats were nearly as dusty. Since it was, by present standards, dark most of the time, dust could hide.
The early modern period began the downfall of dust. First, microscopes discovered things smaller than dust. By the 19th century improved lighting gave dust fewer places to hide. Also by the 19th century, chemistry and materials science gave people (read: housewives) the tools to eliminate dust.
Dust was pursued relentlessly, in the home; outside by paving roads and turning yards into lawns; by providing vast amounts of pure water to wash dust away; and by burying garbage in dumps.
With the coming of washing soda, people were able to wear bright, colorful clothes, and a dye industry arose to provide them. As time went on, our surroundings were redesigned of novel materials that were unfriendly to dust, like glass, linoleum, galvanized metal.
Not everybody was pleased. The Crystal Palace, which was built of glass in London in 1851 to celebrate the modern age., was a wonder of the world -- but also a target of grubby rockthrowers.
The friends of dust were on the losing side. "Civilization depends on control of the small," writes Amato, and by 1899 the subatomic age had begun.
"In the 20th century, smallness and dust have diverged."
Dust attempted a comeback with environmentalists, whose quest for the "natural" necessarily kicked up a lot of dust. Amato's book is a history, not a polemic, but he makes it clear he thinks that returning to the Reign of Dust, with its disease, death and squalor, is nuts.
But while "Dust" is not a polemic, it is not exactly a "history," either. Footnotes are as likely to refer to a Time cover as to a study of industrial dusts. The book is more of a long, thoughtful essay than a monograph.
Though dust has, in one sense, been vanquished for good, in another Amato predicts it will always remain a benchmark.
Philosophers have speculated that our recent knowledge of the very small (and the very big) will change the way we imagine. Perhaps, says Amato, but probably not. "We shape our images to fit our body size, feelings, interests and moral and dramatic purposes," he writes.
"Nothing is too great or too tiny for human prayer or poetry."

UPDATE: Since Amato published "Dust" in 2000. researchers have become increasingly convinced that dust is an important nutrient that supports food chains starting with plankton in the ocean. In Hawaii, they have concluded that dust blown from Mongolia is the only thing that keeps the very rainy island of Kauai green; without an annual recharge of dust, all the nutrients of Kauai's soil would be washed away and the green island would be brown.

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Andrew Rangel

Amato talks about everything besides dust.

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2019

Amato simply cannot focus on actual dust in this book. If you could do a search for how many times dust is mentioned you would most often see it referencing a bible quote or a quick callback to the title. Like an indie movie that started with an idea that was thrown away, but the title was kept. He also strangely takes a sharp turn discussing how feminist histories have ruined mens rightful place in "the great clean up" with their inventions and hard work. Skip this book if you are looking for anything besides a rant about the history of white western culture.

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Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible New Ed Edition

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