If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating ou… - Carl Sagan

If you grow up in a household where there are books, where you are read to, where parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins read for their own pleasure, naturally you learn to read. If no one close to you takes joy in reading, where is the evidence that it's worth the effort?

"In a time in some respect similar to our own, St. Augustine of Hippo, after a lusty and intellectually inventive young manhood, withdrew from the world of sense and intellect and advised others to do likewise; "There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity... It is this which drives us on to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which men should not wish to learn... In this immense forest full of pitfalls and perils, I have drawn myself back, and pulled myself away from these thorns. In the midst of all these things which float unceasingly around me in everyday life, I am never surprised at any of them, and never captivated by my genuine desire to study them... I no longer dream about the stars." The time of Augustine's death, 430 ce., marks the beginning of the Dark Age in Europe."

We are the only species on the planet, so far as we know, to have invented a communal memory stored neither in our genes nor in our brains. The warehouse of this memory is called the library