Ways people reading books spread understanding

Ways people reading books spread understanding

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Never before have actually books been so available as they are today in the modern world; keep reading to discover more.

It is very important to remember that, although lots of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. A lot of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, simply since the huge majority of people could not read, implying that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who might understand them. After a brief boom during the classical era of antiquity, the amount of literate people dropped drastically throughout the Middle Ages. Books ended up being uncommon treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving timeless texts by hand so as to maintain them, as they were a few of the only members of the population who were able to read or write. They were the professional keepers of understanding like biology and faith that all of us have access to in the modern-day world.

It can be tough to picture what the world would resemble today if the large majority of people were not able to read, but for the vast bulk of history the huge bulk of individuals could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the innovation of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more accessible. Of course, it was still just actually the wealthiest and well-educated that could read or write, but it enabled a whole host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have occurred 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 just 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.

With such an abundant history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes simple 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 huge proportion 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 manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history as well. The modern world is built on knowledge that has 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 across the ages.