An essay on the impact of the works in the Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress, an exhibition of rare books from the collection of Stuart Rose. Exhibition was held Sept. 29-Nov. 9, 2014, at the University of Dayton

Benson, Paul H.

English

University of Dayton

University of DaytoneCommonsPhilosophy Faculty Publications Department of Philosophy2014Books and our Human StoriesPaul H. BensonUniversity of Dayton, pbenson1@udayton.eduFollow this and additional works at: http://ecommons.udayton.edu/phl_fac_pubPart of the Education Commons, Engineering Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, LifeSciences Commons, Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons, and the Social and BehavioralSciences CommonsThis Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion inPhilosophy Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of eCommons. For more information, please contact frice1@udayton.edu,mschlangen1@udayton.edu.eCommons CitationBenson, Paul H., "Books and our Human Stories" (2014). Philosophy Faculty Publications. Paper 1.http://ecommons.udayton.edu/phl_fac_pub/18i m p r i n t s  a n d  i m p r e s s i o n sbooks and  our human storiesan introduction to  imprints and impressions: milestones in human progressPaul H. Benson is interim provost  and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Dayton.Paul H. Benson, phd9i n t r o d u c t i o n  .  b e n s o nThe home in which I grew up was 1lled with books, and, when I was young, my parents regularly read to me from them. The activity of reading captivated me then and captivates me to this day. But my great fascination with books, as uniquely interesting, meaning-laden objects, probably began when, as an unsteady toddler, I would scoot into my parents’ bedroom and begin to pull from a low bookshelf dense, heavy volumes from a set of The Great Books of the Western World, edited by Robert Maynard Hutchins and published in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica. These books intrigued me because my parents seemed to treat them with reverence. Their 1fty-four-volume set of The Great Books, including the curious, two-volume Syntopicon, came with its own shelf, into which the weighty volumes 1t snugly. The titles of these books seemed exotic when my parents mouthed them, and the books made a wonderful thud as they fell around me to the 7oor. These books were, for me, even at that tender age, gate-ways to worlds of challenge and adventure. A number of the titles from the Rose Rare Book Collection exhibited in Imprints and Impressions were represented among Hutchins’s selections for  The Great Books. Of course, my appreciation for books as a two-year-old was rather limited. I did not know how to read. I had only the dimmest sense of the power that books can possess for individual readers and for literate communities. I did not understand how books are written, edited, and produced and how varied are the production and functions of books throughout the history of print culture.  I did not yet grasp how my own life and the cultural worlds I  would come to inhabit are connected through time, space, meaning, and value with the lives of others by way of books. As the volumes of The Great Books of the Western World dropped around me, forming a kind of literary nest in a small tract house in one of the new Eisenhower-era suburbs advancing upon corn1elds to the west of Chicago, I sensed, if only obliquely, the magical character of books. 10i m p r i n t s  a n d  i m p r e s s i o n sThe University of Dayton is honored to exhibit this remarkable selection of volumes from the Rose Rare Book Collection in part because these books are such lovely, precious, and in7u-ential artifacts. Encountering these rare and, in many cases, visually compelling volumes impresses upon us the unique gift of the emergence of literacy and the powerful place of the printed word in the unfolding of human cultures. In Imprints and Impressions, we are reminded of the connections between what we now think and feel, imagine and believe, say and do and the worlds that are conceived, expressed, and inscribed in these books. We 1nd in these books a dazzling array of ways in which persons and communities have sought to illuminate or give voice to their place in the world and to carry their voices forward in conversation with generations future and past. We see how differently words, images, and other symbol systems can be ordered so as to seek to make sense of our lives and the worlds in which we live. Consider, for instance, the dramatic contrasts in form and structure among the scriptures in the Polyglot Bible, the theorems of Euclid, the diagrams of Johannes Kepler, the disputations of Thomas Aquinas, the drawings of William Blake, the verse of Phillis Wheatley, and the narratives of J.R.R.Tolkien.As these books demonstrate the world-forming magic of the imprinted page, the uniqueness of these objects’ histories also brings to mind the multitude of books whose originals no longer exist, whose current reproductions are inadequate or incomplete, or whose origins and authors remain unknown to us.   The marked and bound bundles of paper that Stuart Rose has shared with us bear signs of their age, use, and eventual deteri-oration. As we celebrate their preservation as a body of inesti-mably in7uential human endeavor, we are also made aware of how much of the printed legacy of humanity has been—and will be—lost. The time-honored declaration, “Vox audita perit, littera scripta manet,”1 is as much the expression of our hope as a fact about the durability of the printed word.1 “The spoken word passes away, while the written word remains.” right . covereuclidelementa geometrica  (elements of geometry)Venice, 1482First edition Printed by Erhard Ratdolt        The very books that are constructed     to engage in sustained conversation with     future and past generations are also fragile,       all-too-transient objects.11i n t r o d u c t i o n  .  b e n s o n12i m p r i n t s  a n d  i m p r e s s i o n s13i n t r o d u c t i o n  .  b e n s o nWe approach this magni1cent exhibition, then, partly through our particular and personal relationships with books. Taking in these texts up close unlocks rich personal stories: where we were when we 1rst read Fyodor Dostoevsky or Flannery O’Connor; who 1rst led us through Aristotle or Moses Maimonides; what we felt as we became consumed by the worlds of Homer, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, or Virginia Woolf. We also come to this exhibition gripped by the contrast between the historical power and persistence of these texts, on the one hand, and their ultimate impermanence, on the other. These books present us with human strivings to speak beyond the bounds of our speci1c time and place, even as they mark the limits and improbabilities of those very efforts.As an educator, however, what impresses me most about the opportunity to experience these books together, on the Uni-versity of Dayton campus, is the capability of these volumes to create shared spaces for exploration, imagination, creation, and discovery, both here and now and stretched across time. Some of these volumes speak directly to one another. Some can be placed in conversation with each other through our readings of them. All of these volumes can draw us, as active communities of readers, into dialogue with and about them. These books give rise to dialogical spaces within which new questions, emotions, hypotheses, dreams, arguments, relationships, and ways of being human become possible for us and worthy of our contemplation.The University of Dayton’s new Common Academic Program for undergraduates, now entering its second year, embraces the invitations of books such as these. Unlike most general educa-tion curricula, the Common Academic Program is not oriented primarily toward sprinkling small portions of students’ time and attention across the breadth of core, disciplinary ways of human knowing (a little humanities here, a little science and social science there, and so on). Rather, our new curriculum seeks to engage the entire University community in the project of advancing shared goals for student learning: the production of bodies of scholarly work; the development of intelligent, mu-tually enriching dialogue among faith traditions; the cultivation of intercultural competencies; the building of communities that nourish service, justice, and peace; the growth of practical wisdom in response to real human problems and needs; the informed and critical evaluation of the times in which we live; and the discernment of our individual and communal callings.2leftisaac newtonopticks: or, a treatise  of the reflexions, refractions, inflexions  and colours of lightLondon, 1704First edition2 For more on these outcomes  for student learning, see  http://www.udayton.edu/provost/_ resources/cap/docs/ud_student_learning_outcomes.pdf 14i m p r i n t s  a n d  i m p r e s s i o n sAs we take the opportunity, then, to immerse our-selves in some of these texts and their complex, intersecting histories and patters of in7uence, we enter not only a shared space for dialogue and re7ective examination, but also a curricular com-mons that is structured to foster integrative learn-ing in the context of the University of Dayton’s distinctive Marianist educational traditions. In these books, we encounter multiple, profound ways of articulat-ing what it means to be human, new ways of understanding our faith commitments in relation to others’ traditions, and deeper methods for recognizing what is ethically good or right for us to do. These books also strengthen our awareness of the differences between ways in which various academic cultures—the traditions of conceptualization, reasoning, theory, and creative practice that we call “disciplines”—frame and respond to humanity’s deepest questions. Ultimately, our engagements with volumes in the Imprints and Impressions exhibit challenge us to consider how we might strive for greater wholeness in our pursuit of knowledge and integrity in our decisions about how to lead our lives. They challenge us to integrate our learning, our actions, and the broader, over-lapping communities that shape who we are. The essays that follow in this catalogue discuss the relationship of Imprints and Impressions to the disciplinary traditions of the physical and life sciences, the social and behavioral sciences, and the humanities. I invite those fortunate enough to explore this exhibition to con-sider how these disciplinary perspectives on the exhibition can speak to our drive to integrate our thoughts, sentiments, and de-cisions and to live with whole hearts and whole minds—in short, our aim to compose meaningful lives and apprehend an intelligi-ble universe out of the fragmentary character of our experience. Perhaps books such as these can help us to do just that.“Writing a word is an act  of faith—a measure of trust  in its ability to communicate  what the author wishes  to communicate.”s a n d ra  yoc u m  .  pag e  4 215i n t r o d u c t i o n  .  b e n s o n    “Vox audita perit,  littera scripta manet.”blaise pascalpenséesParis, 1670First edition16i m p r i n t s  a n d  i m p r e s s i o n s“The spoken word passes away,  while the written word remains.”

Books and our Human Stories

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Books and our Human Stories

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