Ways great books affected human development

Ways great books affected human development

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The world today is built on a practically incomprehensible quantity of knowledge that has actually been passed down in books.

It can be tough to picture what the world would be like today if the huge bulk of people were not able to read, but for the large majority of history the huge bulk of people could not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the creation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more available. Obviously, it was still only actually the wealthiest and well-read 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 taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed across the globe. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky 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 easily access the totality of human understanding.

With such a rich history of concepts, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes 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 huge percentage of all the books that have ever been composed (or the good ones at least). The best books of all time can quickly change the manner in which you look at the world, which has held true throughout all of history also. The modern world is built on knowledge that has actually been passed 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 throughout the ages.

It is very important to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered 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 bulk of history, simply since the vast majority of individuals could not read, indicating that most books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a short boom during the classical age of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped dramatically during the Middle Ages. Books ended up being rare treasures, with monks meticulously copying out the enduring traditional texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were some of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of understanding like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern-day world.