Hi, I'm Peter Robinson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought

to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at Kings College, London, and the

LMU in Munich, online at historyofilosody.net.

Today's episode, Strong Silent Type, The Printing Press.

If you turn to the nearest shelf, like a book off it and start reading, you'll come quickly

to a title page.

Apart from the title and author of the book, it will probably indicate the year the volume

appeared in print and the publishing house that produced it.

We take this but granted, but books haven't always had title pages.

In the era of the manuscript, that is the literally handwritten book, the title, if there

was one, was usually just given at the top of the first page of text.

Titled pages became common only with the advent of printing.

It was standard to include blank pages at the start of an unbound book, since the first

leaves would tend to get damaged, publishers then realized that they could add useful information

to these extra pages as a kind of advertisement of the contents within.

This is an unprecedented boom to the historian of philosophy.

From the 16th century onward, it's almost always possible to know exactly when and where

books were first published, something the scholar at ancient or medieval philosophy

can only dream about.

And that's only one of the many things the printing press has given us, usually without

our noticing.

As I learned recently from another podcast hosted by Stephen Fry, who apparently listens

...