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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Our ability to gain access to and read books has actually been absolutely important to our capability to comprehend the world around us.

It can be tough to picture what the world would be like today if the huge bulk of people were unable to read, but for the large majority 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 changed that, making books much more available. Of course, it was still just truly the richest and well-read that could read or write, but it made it possible for a whole host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate 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.

With such an abundant history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes simple 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 proportion of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can easily alter the way that you take a look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history also. The modern-day world is built upon understanding that has been handed 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 is essential to bear in mind that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, simply due to the fact that the vast majority of individuals could not read, indicating that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a brief boom during the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate individuals dropped considerably during the Middle Ages. Books became uncommon treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to preserve 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 understanding like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.