CCT109H5 Chapter Notes - Chapter DIEB: Print Culture, Social Epistemology, Imagined Communities

• School: UTM
• Department: Communication, Culture and Technology
• Course: CCT109H5
• Professor: Brett Caraway

Document Summary

In this chapter, i turn to the second of the conceptually distinct effects that arise from a change in the mode of communication: changes to social epistemology . Epistemology: epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. Probably the most striking and important shift from the medieval to the modern cosmology was in terms of individual identity. In print culture, private reading mixed with and encouraged new forms of literary intimacy and explorations of the self. Print was also a major factor in the development of the sense of personal privacy that marks modern society. It produced books smaller and more portable than those common in a manuscript culture, setting the stage psychologically for solo reading in a quiet corner, and eventually for completely silent reading. In sum, the gradual rise of individualism as both a prevailing symbolic form and a predominant moral idea flourished in the printing environment.