Precisely why people having books to read constructed the contemporary world

Precisely why people having books to read constructed the contemporary world

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Books, and the quantity of individuals who might read them, have actually been definitely vital to human advancement over the centuries.

It is necessary to keep in mind that, although a lot 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. Most stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely because the large bulk of people might not read, meaning that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a short boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving traditional texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.

With such an abundant history of concepts, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases simple 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 huge proportion of all the books that have actually ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can easily alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has held true throughout all of history too. The contemporary world is built on understanding that has actually been passed down through books, whether that is philosophy, 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 throughout the ages.

It can be hard to imagine what the world would be like today if the large bulk of people were not able to read, but for the large bulk of history the vast majority of people might not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more accessible. Obviously, it was still just actually the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it allowed a whole host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are lucky 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 gain access to the totality of human understanding.