Ways people reading books spread understanding

Ways people reading books spread understanding

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Our ability to gain access to and read books has been definitely important to our capability to understand the world around us.

It's important to keep in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind'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 because the large majority of people might not read, indicating that most books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a brief boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped dramatically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were a few of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of understanding like biology and religious beliefs that all of us have access to in the modern world.

With such an abundant history of concepts, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's often 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 manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually been true throughout all of history also. The modern-day world is built upon 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 picture what the world would resemble today if the vast majority of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge majority of history the large bulk of individuals might 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 much more accessible. Obviously, it was still just actually the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it allowed an entire host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have occurred if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a foundation of books, and we are lucky to be able to simply 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.