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 handed down in books.

With such an abundant history of ideas, events, 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 big proportion of all the books that have ever been composed (or the good ones at the very least). The best books of all time can easily change the manner in which you take a look at the world, and that has held true throughout all of history too. The contemporary world is built upon knowledge that has actually been handed 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 difficult to picture what the world would be like today if the huge majority of people were unable to read, but for the large majority of history the vast 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-educated that could read or write, however it allowed a whole host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have actually been distributed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky 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 quickly gain access to the totality of human understanding.

It is very important to remember that, although a lot 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. A lot of stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, merely since the huge majority of individuals might not read, meaning that the majority of books were specialised things meant for those few who could comprehend them. After a short boom throughout the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate individuals dropped dramatically throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the enduring classic texts by hand so as to protect them, as they were some of the only members of the population who could read or write. They were the expert keepers of knowledge like biology and religious beliefs that we all have access to in the contemporary world.