Vernacular: The Printing Press

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keep books, and high society was able to read and write, in multiple languages. (Eisenstein, 1979)

The printing press made learning easier, and thus more people took interest in learning, and expanded learning as new material became available for people to study. With the increase in books new ways to sort, create and showcase books became a leading problem, and this led to printers using Arabic numerals to number pages. Pagination was a new aspect of book making, but made it easier to index, reference, and annotate the items being produced. Eventually we come to title pages, headers, and paragraphs all of which is included in modern day writing and reading, so we see the structure of modern publishing and writing start to be explored as early as the 1450s. (Postman, 1982) 

The Scientific Revolution changed the way Europeans viewed the world around them forever. Until the early modern period scientific observers, simply read doctrine which had been published previously, years before, and took that as truth. The Renaissance changed this. The use of printing served to enlighten the scientific community, so they

could no longer believe in what was previously believed in. It was in this time that the three cornerstones of classical intellect, Ptolemaic astronomy, Galenic anatomy and Aristotelian physics, met their downfall and were replaced by the science of Copernicus and Newton. The old methods were replaced as they had no scientific proof to stand on, the new science had to be concise and had to be repeatable under the same circumstances. While printing did help the scientific revolution it did not have as an immediate affect as it had on Luther’s Reformation, manuscript weren’t immediately translated, and some scholars still printed in manuscript.

The printing press laid the foundation for modern science, it increased reliability, it allowed for new means of data collection clearer, tables and graphs and new methods of communication. Among Copernicus and Newton we also had Galileo, Francis Bacon and Descartes as leading scientists, whose work circulated and benefited from the printing press. A major factor to the scientific revolution was the printing presses need to move away from roman numerals, to Arabic numerals. This lead to the overall simplification of diagrams, charts and tables previously mentioned. (Postman, 1982) While some argue that the publishing of scientific material was a good thing, we have to understand printing was a business, and while the information was circulating it wasn’t always the most recent or the proper information getting spread. It can be said that due to the outdated nature of some of the manuscripts translated into the vernacular and printed, that the old methods were

easier to understand in the vernacular and that the new proper and proven methods were rejected to the ease of belief of the old out dated methods.

The printing press was also used as a form of propaganda even in the 1450-1550s. One such case of this is Galileo and his telescope, he used the printing press to allow all of Europe to know he was the one who invented the machine, he did this via letters and published work, but not only that, Italy knew of his invention in less than six months after the fact, and in less than twelve months telescopes were being sold in Paris, France. The widespread of the telescope was due to the ability to quickly, and accurately send the instructions, diagrams, and charts to build and assemble the telescope. (Postman, 1982)

The amount of scientific information being translated into the vernacular was massive. This meant that scientists were publishing their own works in their own countries allowing the non-scientists to attempt to understand science. This lead the public to view science as science, instead of magic or alchemy which had pre-renaissance been the popular belief among those who could not understand the methodology and means of recreation. We must also access the validity of the "mass" science, what the scientists were giving to the public, we can only assume that the science was pseudo-science as it was mass produced and not subject to peer-review at the time. Arguable the printing press gave science some leverage over the times, and set science back by fifty years thanks to the pseudo-science and wrong teachings of old manuscripts.

A given in the last 300 years, is the newspaper, however without a printing press newspapers would have never came to light. The use of the printing press to distribute information in the form of pamphlets and newsletters started late in the 1500s in German cities, this is the first documented case of the newspaper. The use of the printing press to send out informative newspapers was also a highly lucrative business until the turn of the twenty-first century, and is only now meeting its decline due to the internet era. People were  keen to know what was going on around them, locally and internationally, such as a fire down the street, a riot the next town over, or Galileo inventing and refining his own telescope.

Along with the release of the printing press’s popularity among the people, the vernacular language of the countries themselves became more popular. This was due in large part to the middle class not being able to read the Latin language which had previously been the dominate language across scholarly editions of material and the bible before Luther translated it for the German (and eventually the rest of Europe) people. The dominance of Latin was due in large part to the elitist culture that had been present throughout Europe; It also held its relevance so the church could control the word of god as the common person couldn’t read the bible as they didn’t know Latin so had to attend church. 

The printing press also allowed for the emergence of writers, or more accurately for people to recognize writers. Books created by scribes before the printing press were never

the same as the original, as it was open to interpretation and editing of those copying the original, along with the fact that the copy they were copying, could have not been the original. So that a book written by Aristotle copied in Rome would be different than a copy made in London, Germany, or Sweden, no two copies could be the same. The printing press made wide spread learning a more practical and accurate study of the material, they simply needed to be able to rely on the printing press for accuracy, this allowed everyone to have the same copy, as in having multiple books of the same within a learning environment and also allow for those learning countries apart to have the same copy as well. It allowed for Luther to be the head of the protestant reformation across Europe as he was the translator of the Bible. Novels started emerging at this time, and