October 22, 2010
This Research Project will be based upon factual information from Encyclopaedia Britannica On-Line, The Oxford Companion to British History and various other sources that will be listed in order of use. All efforts have been made to produce a testimony to printing in a light-hearted fashion and therefore the inclusion of video transcripts, Google pictures and photographs depicting the progression of the printing press will hopefully add interest.
Introduction:This Research Project will be based upon factual information from Encyclopaedia Britannica On-Line, The Oxford Companion to British History and various other sources that will be listed in order of use. All efforts have been made to produce a testimony to printing in a light-hearted fashion and therefore the inclusion of video transcripts, Google pictures and photographs depicting the progression of the printing press will hopefully add interest.
The scientific revolution that would later challenge the entrenched truths supported by the Church was also largely a consequence of print technology. As readily available books helped expand the collective body of knowledge, indexes and cross-referencing emerged as ways of managing volumes of information and of making creative associations between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Innovations in the accessibility of knowledge and the structure of human thought that attended the rise of print in Europe also influenced art, literature, philosophy and politics. The explosive innovation that characterized the Renaissance was amplified, if not in part generated by, the printing press. The rigidly fixed class structure which determined one's status from birth based on family property ownership began to yield to the rise of an intellectual middle class. The possibility of changing one's status infused the less privileged with ambition and a hunger for education.
The Columbian Press