Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

Exactly why the best books are greater than just stories

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Books, and the quantity of people who could read them, have actually been definitely essential to human advancement over the centuries.

It is necessary 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 mankind's literary history, we did not write much fiction at all. Many stories would have been sung throughout the great majority of history, just since the huge bulk of people could not read, implying that a lot of books were specialised things meant for those few who might comprehend them. After a brief boom during the classical age of antiquity, the quantity of literate people dropped considerably throughout the Middle Ages. Books became unusual treasures, with monks fastidiously copying out the enduring 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 world.

It can be hard to imagine what the world would be like today if the huge bulk of individuals were unable to read, but for the huge bulk of history the large majority of people could not, and nor were books accessible even if they could. It was the invention of the printing press towards the close of the 15th that changed that, making books far more available. Naturally, it was still just truly the richest and well-educated that could read or write, but it made it possible for an entire host of developments in science, art, and thinking to be spread out across great distances. Consider what would have happened if the theory of gravity, or of evolution, could not have been dispersed around the world. Human civilisation rests upon a structure of books, and we are lucky to be able to simply log onto a site 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 knowledge.

With such a rich history of concepts, occasions, and stories right at our fingertips, it's in some cases easy 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 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 alter the manner in which you look at the world, and that has actually held true throughout all of history as well. The modern-day world is built on knowledge that has 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 not been for the books that changed minds throughout the ages.