The key reasons why people having books to read developed the modern world

The key reasons why people having books to read developed the modern world

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Our ability to gain access to and read books has actually been absolutely important to our capability to comprehend the world around us.

It's important to keep in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be considered ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. Many 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 might comprehend them. After a brief boom throughout the classical period 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 populace who were able to read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and faith that we all have access to in the contemporary world.

With such an abundant history of concepts, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases simple to forget how extremely 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 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 change the manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually been true throughout all of history as well. 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.

It can be tough to imagine what the world would resemble today if the huge majority of people were not able to read, but for the large bulk of history the vast majority of individuals might 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 much more accessible. Naturally, it was still just really the richest and well-educated that could read or write, but it made it possible for an entire host of breakthroughs in science, art, and thinking to be spread across great distances. Consider what would have occurred 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 quickly gain access to the totality of human understanding.