The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 273 No 7321 p578
16 October 2004

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What little we could do and see if we did not have glass more
Sacred springs and their healing powers more
Subjectivity is a terrible thing ... it reveals the author’s hands and feet more

What little we could do and see if we did not have glass

It is difficult to visualise a period in human history when we had no glass but 5,000 years ago there was probably no such thing.

As Alan Macfarlane and Gerry Martin explain in an essay published in Sciencefor 3 September, there is a host of uncertainties associated with that useful commodity. It may have originated in the Middle East, in Egypt or in Mesopotamia, although if we allow the concept of glazing, pottery was glazed perhaps as early as 8000BC.

The elder Pliny thought that glass was discovered by Phoenician traders who noticed that nitrate blocks used to support their cooking pots, mixed with sand from the beach, produced a clear liquid under the influence of heat. Egyptian craftsmen apparently made glass vessels about 1500BC and the Assyrians inscribed glass-making instructions on stone tablets about 650BC. Syrian craftsmen two millennia ago invented glass-blowing and passed the idea to the Romans, who spread it throughout Europe. In the 13th century Venice became established as the centre of glassmaking in the western world. Thereafter the technique was adopted as a feature of the industrial revolution.

Throughout history glass has been adopted for many different purposes. Glass beads and jewellery and glass vessels, vases and other containers proliferated in commerce, though strangely not in India, China and Japan till much later. Window glass appeared before the 20th century in the western regions of Eurasia mainly, but then spread. Reflective glasses, silvered to improve their effectiveness, appeared from Venice in the 16th century, but were more or less restricted to Western Europe.

The making of lenses and prisms led to the design of spectacles and optical devices. Scientific instruments involving lenses and mirrors made possible advances in knowledge of the natural and physical worlds. Glass chemical and physical equipment made advanced research possible. “Glass in the form of church stained-glass windows affected what we believed; in the form of mirrors, it affected how we perceived ourselves.” Indeed, it grew into a tool to improve everyday living, in its multitudinous aspects.

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Sacred springs and their healing powers

The ancient Romans celebrated their feast of Fontinalia on 13 October. It was dedicated to Fons, the god of springs, and there was an annual ceremony outside the Porta Fontinalis in Rome.

The Romans believed that natural springs were presided over by nymphs, and there were two minor divinities invoked, a god Fontanus and a goddess Fontana.

Sacred springs were a prominent feature of the Roman landscape, rural and urban, their waters being used for purification rites at critical times of life, such as birth, initiation, marriage and death. It was the association with purity and cleanliness that rendered both springs and rivers sacred to the Romans.

To this day springs and natural wells have retained a fascination for many people, whether or not they bear the name of a saint. So prevalent was their attraction for many people that an edict of the 10th century labelled well-worship as a crime.

Nevertheless, customs have survived, and one of the best ways of collecting funds in premises where a well or spring exists is to encourage people to drop coins into it. Previously, pins were so used.

In addition, the healing power of a spring was invoked by hanging scraps from the garments of a sick individual on bushes that overhang the spring. Even today, some enthusiasts over Druidic matters indulge in the practice, rendering springs incredibly untidy at some seasons.

Water from sacred springs has been used since medieval times to relieve sore eyes, skin diseases, epilepsy and insanity, and sometimes has been bottled and taken to distant places. Perhaps, if the custom serves to encourage a greater degree of cleanliness, it should be encouraged.

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Subjectivity is a terrible thing ... it reveals the author’s hands and feet

Objectivity and subjectivity are two contrasting ways of approaching any problem faced by a human being.

The American poet Ezra Pound, in lauding the objective stance, pleaded for “Objectivity and again objectivity and expression”. And Anton Chekhov in 1883 weighed in against subjectivity: “Subjectivity is a terrible thing. It is bad in this alone, that it reveals the author’s hands and feet. ... A writer must be as objective as a chemist: he must abandon the subjective line.”

Philosophers have classified judgement in any situation as objective if it concerns inanimate objects but subjective if it pertains to people. And morality theory holds that a judgement is defensible on rational grounds if objective but, if it involves the feelings of individuals placed in a certain situation and so becomes subjective, it may cease to be rational, though morally justified.

Chekhov is right in pointing to chemists as adopting the objective approach; all scientists must do this if they are to seek truth amidst the bewildering evidence that this universe thrusts upon them. Politicians and lawyers seeking to make a point rather than a truth take a different route, choosing from the available evidence that which suits their argument and discarding whatever does not. Their attitude is the subjective one and unfortunately tends to discredit creative subjectivity.

Human beings and their pets need the comfort of the subjective attitude to things, which is essential to any kind of social structure. The curse of bureaucracy lies in its sorry attempts to be objective and take no account of human relationships. Logic is a fine thing in its place and to be trained to think logically is an essential function of education. At the same time, education should prepare an individual for sharing the innermost feelings of others, so inducing the indispensable virtues of empathy and sympathy.

It would be a far happier world if we cultivated the emotional elements of the subjective attitude to facts instead of condemning them as weaknesses. As Immanuel Kant put it: “Happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.”
But within the strict bounds of scientific research, let us never forget the virtue of objectivity.

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