Communication in Orality and the Advent of Writing

The balance of intellectual power partly shifted to Europe with the advent of printing following Gutenburg. Its success was partly due to the great advantage of the alphabet, which enabled movable type to be used with a minimum number of units, unlike the more complex logographic scripts of the Far East. Paper was essential in this shift since it provided a flexible, smooth, and inexpensive surface for the press; it was then that the milling of paper really took off in the West. In the Islamic world, which had diffused the production of paper from China to Europe, the acceptance of printing was very different; scriptures sacred to Muslims had at first to be written, not printed. In contrast to earlier times, with the mechanization of writing, the circulation of ideas and information became much less costly and more rapid in Europe than elsewhere. The value of rapid exchange of ideas at a distance can be seen in the correspondence of members of the Royal Society in Britain, where the impetus of the scientific revolution was certainly supported by such communication between scholars in various fields and countries, in the same way, but much faster than had earlier happened in the vast Islamic world as a result of the use of paper as a writing material. Now it was possible to send printed versions of scientific papers to a wide range of people known to be interested in the same topic.