Is that stone genuine? Marco Beretta: The alchemy of glass: Counterfeit, imitation and transmutation in ancient glassmaking. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2009, 208pp, $59.95 HB
Is that stone genuine? Marco Beretta: The alchemy of glass: Counterfeit, imitation and transmutation in ancient glassmaking. Sagamore Beach, MA: Science History Publications, 2009, 208pp, $59.95 HB
复制标题
那块石头是真的吗？
DOI：
10.1007/s11016-011-9577-6
复制
发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Martinón-Torres M
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Martinón-Torres M
考古学家很清楚，早期生产和使用玻璃的主要动机是模仿宝石和半宝石。因此，自公元前第二个千年以来定期记录的玻璃制造，代表了古老炼金术“艺术模仿自然”的最早和最明确的表达之一。因此，令人惊讶的是，玻璃几乎没有受到炼金术和化学历史学家的学术关注-通常更关心金属的转化-贝雷塔的书是一个受欢迎的贡献，以纠正这一历史忽视。从本质上讲，这本专著展示了从青铜时代美索不达米亚和埃及直到近代早期的玻璃制造历史，特别强调了天然和人造石头的实践经验如何告知不断发展的物质理论。因此，作者在将技术史和思想史联系起来方面做出了有价值的尝试--除了一些明显的例外，这是另一种在早期炼金术和化学的许多学术研究中缺失的方法。在第一章介绍了玻璃和其他人造玻璃材料的发明和早期使用之后，本书的核心（第2-4章）集中在玻璃制造技术的发展和解释古典时期石头和玻璃的理论的多样性上。这就是这部作品的主要力量，因为它提供了一个重要的来源汇编，说明了玻璃在自然哲学家，工匠和消费者中引起的兴趣，以及玻璃在大量物质理论中发挥的重要作用。尤其引人入胜的是伯莱塔关于公元前世纪吹制玻璃的发现所带来的革命的论点（第3章），不仅扩大了这种多功能材料的实际应用范围（包括光学和仪器的发展，
Archaeologists are well aware that the main motivation behind the early production and use of glass was to imitate precious and semi-precious stones. As such, glassmaking, documented regularly since the second millennium BC onwards, represents one of the earliest and most unequivocal expressions of the old alchemical precept of ‘art imitating nature’. It is therefore surprising that glass has received such little scholarly attention by historians of alchemy and chemistry—generally more concerned with metal transmutation—and Beretta’s book is a welcome contribution to redress this historical neglect. In essence, the monograph presents a history of glassmaking from its origins in Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt until the early modern period, placing particular emphasis on how practical experience with natural and artificial stones informed evolving theories of matter. The author thus makes a valuable attempt at linking technological and intellectual history—another approach that, with a few notable exceptions, is missing in much scholarship on early alchemy and chemistry. Following an introduction to the invention and early use of glass and other artificial vitreous materials in the first chapter, the core of the book (Chapters 2–4) concentrates on the developments in glassmaking technology and the diversity of theories to explain stones and glass during Classical Antiquity. Herein lies the main strength of this work, as it presents an important compilation of sources that illustrate the interest that glass arose among natural philosophers, craftspeople and consumers alike, as well as the important role glass played in a plethora of theories of matter. Particularly enthralling is Beretta’s argument about the revolution brought about by the discovery of glassblowing in the first century BC (Chapter 3), not only in widening the range of practical applications for this versatile material (including developments in optics and instrumentation with a direct bearing in