Sometime during the third century before Christ, a Macedonian general named Ptolemy* decided that the world- his world, comprised of nation states like Egypt and Rome and Greece- needed a central repository of knowledge and research. Someplace that would coordinate, keep safe, and keep available, the accumulated knowledge of his time. And, as rulers and the ruling minded often think, it would impress the hell out of everyone.
So, a library. A vast library and research center was built in Alexandria, Egypt.
No one knows exactly what was held there, what sort of collections curated. But we do know, from contemporary descriptions, that it was huge and comprehensive and vital. Somewhere between forty thousand an four hundred thousand books, per estimate. At it's height- per Galen- the library sent missions out far and wide to acquire new knowledge, and visitors were made to surrender any books they might have for copying, while they were in the city. The library returned the copies and kept the originals.
The list of likely contributors, who's works filled the shelves, is mind boggling. Scientists, artists, engineers... Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Sappho, Homer, Euclid, Archimedes...
It was destroyed- gradually. One ruler killed another and purged the library's staff of ... dangerous and possibly critical intellectuals. Julius Caesar, laying siege to the city, accidentally burned down a part of it, and the emperor Aurelian further damaged it it while suppressing a revolution.
Thanks for staying with me,
The take away from this- for me- is that this marvellous thing, this amazing repository of knowledge, painstakingly collected over centuries... basically died because it wasn't valued as heavily as it once was. Because wars and battles were more important than knowledge, and critical thinking was less important than supporting the party line.
I think we're heading in the same direction, here in the US. Criticism and intellect and a culture of ideas, slopping around is being murdered. People surround themselves with people who think the same way and avoid challenges to their opinion- or out right fight them. People don't disagree, they fight. They don't have differences of opinion, they fall out. There is open and popular disdain for research and intellectualism and mastery of thought. For accumulated knowledge and working from reason.
It scares the hell out of me. I fear an intellectual dark age. A time when feeling and opinion matter more than fact. And I wonder- how the hell we can combat this. And I wonder, generations from now, which of the things we now understand and take for granted will be lost wonders.
Music, art, mathematics- understandings of how the universe works and how our world works. It's all more fragile than you think, than any of us want to believe.
*Probably. Could have been his son. Records are understandably vague.
