Glass: A World History
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.67 (652 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0226500284 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-09-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
It played a vital role in the growth of Western science, marking a key difference between European civilization and civilization everywhere else. "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. It wasn't until Europe's early Renaissance, however, that glass was used for something more than mere jewelry and ceramics. Miller. "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. --John J. Nobody knows who invented it, though the ancient Egyptians or Mesopotamians are the likeliest candidates. "The invention of spectacles in the 13th century increased the intellectual life of professional wo
A Customer said Glass, a necessity!. 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.. "Not a history, not about glass" according to Karl Stull. 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 h. Donald B. Siano said Spectacles of history. 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 convin
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. People with poor vision would grope in the shadows, and planes, cars, and even electricity probably wouldn't exist. 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.. Picture, if you can, a world without glass. Starting ten thousand years ago with its invention in the Near East, Macfarlane an