The way individuals reading books dispersed understanding

The way individuals reading books dispersed understanding

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The world today is built upon a practically incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has been handed down in books.

With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly lucky we are to have the likes of the founder of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones or the CEO of the asset manager with a stake in Amazon books supporting access to a substantial percentage of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you look at the world, which has actually held true throughout all of history as well. The modern world is built on understanding that has been passed down through books, whether that is ideology, science, or history, and human civilisation would not be anywhere near as advanced as it is today if it had actually not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It can be tough to envision what the world would be like today if the vast bulk of individuals were not able to read, but for the vast bulk of history the large majority of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books a lot more accessible. Naturally, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it made it possible for an entire host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky to be able to simply log onto a site like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and easily gain access to the totality of human knowledge.

It's important to bear in mind that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, just because the huge majority of individuals could not read, suggesting that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a brief boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped considerably during the Middle Ages. Books ended up being rare treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of understanding like biology and religion that all of us have access to in the modern world.