Today we had our first taste of what lectures will be like in the coming week, and we seem to have broadly covered most of European history in those two hours and, to my slight disappointment, only very briefly touched on the golden age of the Islamic empire (as an Arab, and like all Arabs, I try to hide the mess of today behind wistful memories of our greatest heights).
The one thing that particularly interested me was the invention of the printing press. I imagine its introduction into society was as revolutionary in the 16th century as the Internet has been in the 21st. It's almost surreal to think of the utter stagnation Europe was in for some one thousand years when innovation is as fast as it is today, but I think it's also to the credit of civilisation that we've come as far as we have in the last five hundred years. We certainly would not be here today, tapping away in front of computers as much as we do, had the printing press not brought with it the want and need to be literate to those outside of monasteries and nobility.
We also touched on the philosophies of influential Renaissance thinkers, early journalists and scientists, all of which I've yet to make any permanent opinions on, and if 'History of Western Philosophy' is as difficult to take in as I've heard, I imagine it'll be quite a while before I have any opinion worth speaking of. Then again, this is only the very beginning.
Good points. It is not so difficult if yiu take it a bit at a time.
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