The new machines--type foundry and printing press--ministered to this devouring curiosity by a flood of broadsheets, news letters, almanacs, libellea, pasquils, pamphlets, and books. They spread the news at a hitherto unknown speed, increased the range of human communication, broke down isolation. The broadsheets and brochures were not necessarily read by all the people on whom they exercised their influence; rather each printed word of information acted like a pebble dropped into a pond, spreading its ripples of rumour and hearsay. The printing press was only the ultimate source of the dissemination of knowledge and culture; the process itself was complex and indirect, a process of dilution and diffusion and distortion, which affected ever increasing numbers, including the backward and illiterate. Even three or four centuries later, the teachings of Marx and Darwin, the discoveries of Einstein and Freud, did not reach the vast majority of people in their original, printed text, but through second- and third- hand sources, through hearsay and echo. The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through textbooks--they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied form of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.
Arthur Koestler, The Sleepwalkers, ARKANA, Penguin Books, London, 1989, pg. 150
Copyright, Arthur Koestler, 1959
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