Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible by Joseph Amato, University of
California Press, 拢13.95/$22.50, ISBN 0520218752
HEARD the one about the two historians in a bar? After a few beers, they
challenge each other to think of the most impossible subject for a book.
鈥淐ushions!鈥� says one, naming the first thing he sees.
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鈥淭oo easy,鈥� says the other. 鈥淛ust subtitle it `A history of comfort鈥� and it鈥檚
a thesis on the development of consumerism. You want something much more
useless.鈥� He glances round the premises. 鈥淚鈥檝e got it鈥攄ust!鈥�
鈥淚 can handle that. Subtitle it `A history of the small and the invisible鈥�
and you鈥檝e got yourself a great little survey showing how modernity is all about
people鈥檚 changing perceptions.鈥�
And the punchline? Simply that Joseph Amato has gone and done it.
Dust wasn鈥檛 really conceived this way, of course. Amato himself describes
its much more respectable genesis. But the finished product does give the
impression of something that seemed like a good idea at the time but became a
bit of a chore as the need to turn an intriguing thought into a 鈥渂ig idea鈥� and
bulk it out to book length became apparent.
Amato cleverly solves both problems with his particular big idea, though. The
argument is that dust once represented the boundary between the visible and the
invisible but lost this status as science uncovered new worlds within the world
we knew. This allows Amato cover things that are invisible not just because
they鈥檙e small but also because they鈥檙e behind some kind of barrier鈥攊nside
the human body, for example. So he carves out plenty of room for a serious
history not just of barely visible particles, but also of our tools for seeing
the invisible and what we鈥檝e done with the new perceptions they have given
us.
The 17th-century microscope, for instance, made it possible to see
capillaries, the missing link between arteries and veins, and thus clinched
Harvey鈥檚 audacious claim that our blood must circulate. More recently, devices
such as the atomic force microscope have allowed us to 鈥渟ee鈥� atoms.
It鈥檚 obvious from the start that Amato is no scientist. He鈥檚 not really
interested in dust itself, only in what it means to people. So don鈥檛 expect much
detail about all the fascinating varieties of dust he digs up, or even any
pictures of the stuff鈥攖he few illustrations are pretty but
uninformative.
But I don鈥檛 want to criticise Dust for not being what it never set
out to be. As an essay on the emergence of the invisible, and its significance
for our world view, it is鈥攁part from the above-mentioned sense of its all
being rather hard work鈥攅rudite, elegantly written, daring in its scope and
beautifully produced.
However, there is one serious weakness. Despite a few token caveats, Amato鈥檚
perception of his subject is firmly rooted in that comfortable North American
culture where, at least if you鈥檙e a professor, dust is someone else鈥檚 problem.
And where, we are assured, all surfaces are now made from dust-proof
materials.
One quote is enough to reveal the problem. 鈥淐ontrol of our world,鈥� says
Amato, 鈥�. . . is an emulated Western good, and more than anything else accounts
for Western material and perceived cultural superiority.鈥� Well, I鈥檓 no expert,
but this sounds to me like a case of what is known in the trade as the Whig view
of history. Historians of this persuasion (and there aren鈥檛 many of them left)
believe themselves to be living in the best of all possible times, and write
their history in terms of the great march of progress that led them into it.
Indeed, although the word Whiggery appears nowhere in this politically
correct text, Dust is actually about mastery rather than visibility.
Mastery first of things many times larger than ourselves, from solar systems to
steam engines. Then of things many times smaller, from dust to microbes to atoms
and subatomic particles.
Once the small became an object of study, Amato鈥檚 supposed grand avenue of
advance began with the realisation that dust could harbour life-threatening
organisms, continued with the great clean-up that followed the great dirty-up of
the Industrial Revolution, and finally led to cleanliness so absolute that we
now make microchips by the million and expect most of them to work.
All good stuff of its kind, I suppose, but dangerously close to a history of
cleanliness rather than a history of dust. And dust, as Amato himself hints from
time to time, isn鈥檛 all bad. There are a host of valuable particles, from
pigments to genetically modified bacteria, that we feel no desire to sweep under
the carpet.
Speaking of which, Amato doesn鈥檛 say much about the people for whom dust
control is a way of life. Booth and Hoover, fathers of the vacuum cleaner, do
get a look-in, but the dual-cyclonic fame of Britain鈥檚 pop star of dust, James
Dyson, doesn鈥檛 seem to have reached the West Coast yet. More importantly,
there鈥檚 little mention of all the behind-the-scenes work that, for the lucky
few, has made dust disappear. And there鈥檚 no discussion, for instance, of the
research by Ruth Schwartz Cowan and others which showed that, on average, people
now spend more time cleaning, not less, because standards of cleanliness have
risen.
This increased industry is perhaps progress of a sort, as long as you don鈥檛
have to do it yourself. But something on the unfortunate army of immigrants who
spend their lives fighting dust in wealthy homes, public buildings and hotel
rooms worldwide would have helped make Dust seem more like history and
less like propaganda for the American dream.