Ways in which great books influenced human advancement

Ways in which great books influenced human advancement

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Our ability to gain access to and read books has been absolutely crucial to our capability to understand the world around us.

It can be difficult to envision what the world would be like today if the vast bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the vast majority of history the huge bulk of people could not, and nor were books available even if they could. It was the development of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books much more available. Naturally, it was still just really the richest and well-read that could read or write, however it made it possible for a whole host of advancements in science, art, and thinking to be spread out throughout great distances. Consider what would have taken place if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been distributed across the globe. 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 access the totality of human knowledge.

It is very important to bear in mind that, although plenty of the best modern books of all time tend to be regarded as ground-breaking works of fiction, for most of humankind's literary history, we did not compose much fiction at all. A lot of stories would have been sung throughout the great bulk of history, merely because the vast majority of people could not read, implying that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a quick boom throughout the classical period of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped dramatically during the Middle Ages. Books became rare treasures, with monks painstakingly copying out the surviving classic texts by hand so as to preserve them, as they were some of the only members of the populace who could read or write. They were the specialist keepers of knowledge like biology and religion that we all have access to in the modern world.

With such a rich history of ideas, events, and stories right at our fingertips, it's sometimes easy 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 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 quickly alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has been true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on understanding that has actually been passed 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 not been for the books that changed minds across the ages.