Ways in which great books affected human development

Ways in which great books affected human development

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Our capability to access and read books has been definitely vital to our ability to comprehend the world around us.

It is essential to bear in mind that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of mankind'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 huge majority of individuals could not read, indicating that most books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a brief boom throughout the classical era of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped significantly throughout 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 a few of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the professional keepers of knowledge like biology and religious beliefs that all of us have access to in the modern world.

With such a rich history of concepts, 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 percentage of all the books that have actually ever been written (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly alter the way that you look at the world, which has actually been true throughout all of history also. The contemporary world is built on 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 across the ages.

It can be difficult to picture what the world would resemble today if the huge majority of people were unable to read, but for the huge majority of history the large bulk 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 far 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 out 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 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.