The way individuals reading books dispersed understanding

The way individuals reading books dispersed understanding

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Never before have books been so available as they are today in the modern-day world; keep reading to find out more.

With such an abundant history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes easy to forget how exceptionally 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 percentage of all the books that have ever been written (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history too. The modern world is built upon knowledge that has 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 is essential to keep in mind that, although a lot of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for the majority of humanity's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, merely due to the fact that the huge majority of people could not read, implying that many books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a short boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were some of the only members of the populace 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 contemporary world.

It can be difficult to picture what the world would resemble today if the large bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the large bulk of history the large majority of individuals 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 a lot more available. Obviously, it was still just truly the richest and well-educated that could read or write, but it enabled a whole host of breakthroughs 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 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 easily gain access to the totality of human understanding.