Breaking the shackles of time

What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles.

Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

Just days after writing my post about trying to define what a book is ("What is a book?" July 20), I came upon the definition offered by scientist Carl Sagan on his famous TV series Cosmos.

He calls it "a flat object made from a tree." That's two things I didn't find in the dictionary definition: a "flat object" and "made from a tree." In general, those words describe what we usually think of as a book. Of course, a book doesn't necessary have to be flat, such as a scroll, or made of paper (Clay tablets? A Kindle?). Even so, his words ring true most of the time.

And then he adds, "on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles." If you are illiterate, of course, funny dark squiggles are what you see when you open a book. The same is true when you open a book written in some language you cannot read.

Then Sagan goes on, "But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you."

Of course, for this to happen, words must be more than squiggles. One must be able to read and understand those squiggles.

Further, he says, "Writing is perhaps the greatest human invention, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."

I like that a man of science, speaking on a show about science, was able to recognize the importance of language, reading, writing and books that made that science, and so much else, possible.