Why individuals having books to read built the contemporary world

Why individuals having books to read built the contemporary world

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The world today is built on an almost incomprehensible quantity of understanding that has been handed down in books.

With such a rich history of ideas, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often simple to forget how exceptionally 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 big percentage of all the books that have actually ever been composed (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, and that has been true throughout all of history also. The contemporary world is built on understanding that has actually 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 actually not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.

It can be tough to envision what the world would resemble today if the huge bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the large majority of history the large majority of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more accessible. Of course, it was still only really the wealthiest and well-read that could read or write, however it made it possible for an entire host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure 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 easily gain access to the totality of human understanding.

It is necessary to bear in mind that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humanity's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. The majority of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, just because the vast bulk of people could not read, meaning that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a brief boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the amount of literate individuals dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were a few of the only members of the populace who were able to read or write. They were the expert keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that all of us have access to in the modern world.