The Printing Revolution Of Early Modern Europe, Eisenstein - B

 This erudite tome reviews the impact on the 15th and 16th centuries of the revolution begun with the printing of the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. "The advent of printing is to be taken to mean the establishment of presses in urban centers beyond the Rhineland in  the 1460's." Early books followed scriptal conventions using similar columns, abbreviations, initials and margins. Printing required previously unnecessary collaboration between creators of ideas and the implementers of the trade. Financing the bigger and more complex process brought together disparate specialists, as did distribution, marketing and sales. Learning by reading expanded and took on new importance.  Knowledge of all kinds spread widely, not through just the printed word, but also the illustrations that were equally abundant. Standardization extended beyond style of print to methods of presentation. Montaigne was the first to use the essay to convey ideas to a wide group of people. In addition to the sharing of sophisticated ideas, there was an abundance of 'how to' books on topics as diverse as making a dress and conducting an inquisition. Alphabetizing, indexing, tables of contents and cataloguing became systematized. Page numbers, punctuation and page breaks soon followed. "Typographical fixity is a basic prerequisite for the rapid advancement of learning." The concepts of authorship and literary property rights came to the fore. In essence, a new method of duplicating handwriting began and it transformed intellectual life in western civilization. 

 The shift from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance was under way when the printing revolution began, thus the focus in this book is on how it was affected by this change. For the medievalists, antiquity was part of their continuum. After a century of printing, it stood out as a distinct historical era. The past was set at a'fixed distance'. A sustained recovery of  the antique heritage could only be accomplished by an abundance of printed materials. Print enabled the spread of ancient languages and scripts. It furthered the study of and the rediscovery of the past. The age of printing accompanied the Renaissance, rather than engendered it. "Under the aegis of the early presses, a classical revival of Italy was reoriented. Under the same auspices, German Protestantism was born. Lutheranism  was from the first the child of the printed book, and through this vehicle Luther was able to make exact, standardized and ineradicable impressions on the mind of Europe." Although no one knows how an academic disputation written in Latin became so widespread, his ideas were literally before the world in a matter of months. The medium also provided the  RC church with the means to respond to the Reformation and to systematize its own liturgy. The new printings of the Bible in multiple vernaculars coincided with the beginnings of nationalism. Because Protestantism spread in many languages, it would be forever divided and lacking Catholicism's unity. "Protestant doctrines harnessed a traditional religion to a new technology with the result that Western Christianity embarked... on a course of historical mutation. Perhaps the civil war in Christendom was not inevitable, but the advent of printing did, at the very least, rule out the prospect of perpetuating the status quo."

 Printing had decidedly different effects on scripture and science*. It was clearly fragmenting and disruptive on the former.  Whereas on the latter, it transcended linguistic divisions and brought unity to scientific knowledge. This book was published in the early 1980's. The author closes with a somewhat prescient thought. "Since the advent of movable type, an enhanced capacity to store and retrieve, preserve and transmit, has kept pace with an enhanced capacity to create, and destroy, innovate and outmode."

* The book also tackles what I consider the desultory topic of the explosion of science in the 16th century. The ideas of  Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and Descartes  became widely known.