How individuals reading books dispersed understanding

How individuals reading books dispersed understanding

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Books, and the amount of people who might read them, have been absolutely important to human advancement over the centuries.

With such an abundant history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy to forget how incredibly fortunate 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 ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly change the way that you look at the world, which has actually been true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on knowledge that has been handed 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It can be tough to picture what the world would be like today if the vast bulk of people were not able to read, but for the huge bulk of history the vast bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the creation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more available. Obviously, it was still only actually the richest and well-educated that could read or write, however it allowed a whole host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread throughout great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are fortunate to be able to just log onto a website like the one backed by the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books, and quickly access the totality of human understanding.

It is very important to remember that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely since the vast bulk of people might not read, meaning that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped considerably during the Middle Ages. Books ended up being unusual 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.