Ways in which people reading books expanded knowledge

Ways in which people reading books expanded knowledge

Blog Article

Books, and the amount of individuals who might read them, have been definitely vital to human development 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 huge majority of people might not read, meaning that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who could understand them. After a quick 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 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.

With such an abundant history of ideas, 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 change the manner in which you take a look at the world, and that has been true throughout all of history too. The modern-day world is built upon knowledge 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It can be difficult to picture what the world would resemble today if the huge majority of people were not able to read, but for the large bulk of history the huge bulk of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the creation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that altered that, making books far more available. Of course, it was still only truly the richest and well-read that could read or write, however it made it possible for an entire host of breakthroughs 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 distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are fortunate to be able to merely log onto a site 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.