The day the Universe changed

..have
used many of his own words from the book that was also published at the time.

The invention of the printing press not only enabled the democratisation of
knowledge but also saw the end of the age of everyday reliance on memory and
deep symbolic representation. In a world without printing literacy is rather
naturally minimal. In a world where travel was limited to the surrounds of the
village most people never went eleven kilometres from where they were born.
The world was a narrow band lived between sunrise and sunset and the edge of
the forest. News travelled slowly and by word of mouth.
The news of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, ending the dominance
of the Eastern Roman church and Empire, took a month to reach Venice, twice
as long to reach Rome and three months to reach the rest of Europe.
‘For each village or household not connected with trade, news came for
the most part with the travelling entertainers, small parties of musicians and
poets called jongleurs, or troubadours. Principally their entertainment took
the form of the recital of poems and songs written about real events.
Since the audience would hear the story only once the performance was histrionic,
repetitive and easily memorised and often reworked into the local dialect for
the benefit of the audience. The entire performance was in rhyme so that the
audience and the performers could more easily remember it.
The jongleurs had phenomenal memories. A good jongleur needed to hear several
hundred lines of poetry three times to be able to commit it to memory. This
was a common enough ability at the time: university teachers were known to be
able to repeat a hundred lines of text shouted to them only one by their pupils.’
In a world where few could read or write, a good memory was essential and was
the reason that rhyme was the prevalent form of literature of the time. Up until
the fourteenth century everything except legal documents was written in rhyme.
There were aids to memory. The Ad Herennium was the major mnemonic reference
book of the Middle Ages that provided a technique for recalling vast quantities
of material though the use of memory theatres.
The aids and device for the recall of memory were also adapted to the interiors
of churches, where the frescoes which told the faithful the path to true salvation.
What we now know as great works of art were indoctrination of the faith for
the congregation, where not only was the story a moral and spiritual exercise
but each detail in the painting represented a symbol of suffering or the hereafter.

The pear symbolised marital faith through association with Saint Catherine the
mystical bride of Christ. The rose represented virginity and purity; the carnation,
because of the shape of its calyx, suggested the nails of the Crucifixion; and
herbs of medicinal virtue suggested the healing powers of Christ.

The invention of the printing press was driven not only by new technology
– businesses needed to store transactional information as national and trans-national
trade expanded.
The availability of paper and the subsequent spread of literacy meant that
memory was now permanently stored and available. A human capacity was abandoned,
an oral society disappeared and replaced by a new technology, a technology
that is now globally linked and cross referenced and available from any point
of the globe at any time.
‘The dissemination of knowledge didn’t mean that it was any more
accurate for many of the old inaccuracies were disseminated as well – standardisation
meant that errors were perpetuated on a wider scale.’
Printing was also one of the first examples of industrial entrepreneurialism,
an industry that spread and created a new economy and changed existing social
structures. Apart from the Bible the most popular books were of the “How
to Do It” kind. This eventually ended the Guild system – closed shops
of specialised crafts and skills.
But the availability of printing meant that the Church could reproduce thousands
of printed indulgences, which were given to the faithful in return for prayer,
penitence or, more importantly, money.
There is one interesting divergence in the series from the accepted truth
regarding Gutenberg. We know that Gutenberg was involved in a financial misadventure
making polished metal mirrors that were believed to capture holy light from
religious relics, for sale to pilgrims to Aachen. Most references say that
the event was delayed by one year and the capital already spent could not
be repaid. Burke cheekily claims it was because he made a mistake with the
date – time being another theme of the book – not that the Fair was
delayed by a year To satisfy the investors Gutenberg is said to have promised
to share a “secret” one that would make them all rich. It probably
did
The invention of the printing press leads inextricably to the Reformation.
And so it goes.
But the series common element is to trace the growth of Western knowledge
from the Greeks to particle physics. The growth of what we know call the Scientific
Method.
James Burke concludes rather brilliantly that …”in spite of all
its claims science offers no method or universal explanation of reality adequate
for all time. The search for the truth, the ‘discovery of nature’s
secrets’ as Descartes put it, is an idiosyncratic search for temporary
truth. One truth is replaced by another. The fact that over time science has
provided a more complex picture of nature is no the final proof that we live
by the best most accurate, model so far”
The universe is what we say it is. When theory changes the universe changes.
The truth is relative.
As they sat ‘Do yourself a favour .’