What is the meaning of those four red hashmarks on the Library of Congress graphic? What do they represent? That question I will answer now.
In the last post, I listed five key criteria that warrant consideration in this highly speculative analysis of erudition. To review, they are as follows:
- How many books did Lewis read?
- What was the value of the information in the books Lewis read?
- How robust was Lewis’ comprehension of what he read?
- How flawless was Lewis’ ability to retain the information he read?
- What did Lewis accomplish with all that “literary learning”?
The graphic that accompanied the prior post is a model of the Library of Congress collection, depicting only the 16 million print books in English. The red marks relate to the first question: “How many books did Lewis read? How so?
In an effort to establish some sort of upper boundary to the total number of books that any human being might possibly read over the course of a lifetime, I imagined the scenario of a hypothetical “Occupational Reader.” I am quite sure no such person has ever existed, but the exercise is illuminating.
The scenario is this: some person (for the sake of pronoun simplicity, let’s assume this is a man) is hired by an institution to do nothing but read books his entire career. That is his job, his sole responsibility. He has no expected deliverables, nor any performance metrics, except for the total number of books read.
This means he sits and reads 8 hours each workday, 250 days a year (weekends off and 2 weeks of vacation) over the course of a career that spans 45 years. This man reads at the average speed of an “Avid” reader (a very good reader) which is 450 words per minute. The average book has 300 pages, with 400 words per page. He never reads any book a second time. Nor does he read at all when away from the office.
One might ask: Does he comprehend what he reads? It doesn’t matter. Does he retain the knowledge gained for recall while watching Jeopardy during his evenings? Again, it doesn’t matter to the analysis. All that matters is how many books he reads cover-to-cover.
He reads 20,000 books.
On the prior graphic each of the four red lines represents a bookshelf that is 150 feet long and which holds 5,000 books. Those four lines represent the total product of his life’s work—20,000 books read.
What is instructive is to see just how small a portion of the entire collection of 16 million books he reads. He barely makes a dent. After all that reading, he has read a mere one-eighth of one percent (0.125%) of the books at his disposal. Slacker!
My purpose was to set a credible upper limit to the number of books that any one person might possible have read no matter what century. Were his rate of reading 600 words per minute, he might have completed 27,000 books. But this is a mythical example. Nobody who can read at that speed has ever spent 40 hours every week for 45 years doing nothing but reading. That includes any credible candidate for “most erudite person in history.” They were busy living meaningful lives.
Based upon my own research, it is exceedingly rare that someone can read at a rate of speed that exceeds 600 words per minute. Experts insist that anyone who claims the ability to read at a rate higher than 600 words per minute is really only scanning the material. The higher the rate, the more cursory the scanning.
You may recall the old Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics courses from 50 years ago. She claimed she could read 2,700 words per minute. A few years later, President Jimmy Carter claimed that he could read 2,000 words per minute with 95% comprehension.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
Try reading Milton’s Paradise Lost or Owen Barfield’s Poetic Diction at that pace. Scanning text has no more to do with erudition that looking out the window while driving down the Autobahn at 160 kph has to do with understanding German culture.
That said, I do believe that C.S. Lewis could read for comprehension at a speed greater than 600 words per minute. But not by much, as you will see in the next post. His speed was never measured, so it is all speculative.
I will posit a theory here: erudition is not increasing, but is on the wane. With the internet and social media distracting us, reading is in serious decline in every corner of the globe. Consequently, I am inclined to believe the “most erudite person in history” has already come and gone. That is true for all five candidates on my list—which, by the way, is now 6 as I have added John Milton to the list.
Daniel J. Boorstin, a University of Chicago historian who in 1975 was appointed Librarian of Congress, spoke out about the decline in “literary reading” in the United States. Boorstin was famous for saying: “’Homo-Up-to-Datum’ is a dunce.” In other words, Americans know everything about the last 24 hours . . . not that much about the last 24 years . . . and next to nothing about the last 24 centuries. Do you doubt him? Me neither.
Apparently, the situation is worsening. Research released in April 2022 produced some statistics that are useful in framing “the Scale of Erudition”, and one finding that is rather surprising.
- The average or “Moderate” American reader reads maybe 12 books per year(one a month), which equates to 600 books in total over a lifetime.
- The above average or “Avid” reader reads maybe 50 books per year (one a week) for a total of 2,400 books over a lifetime.
- The super, or “Voracious” reader reads maybe 100 per year (two books per week, for a total of 4,800 books read over a lifetime.
- Fully 33% of Americans who graduate from high school never read another “literature” book the rest of their lives. (Really?)
So, what is this “Scale of Erudition” I have referred to several times? It is a phrase I coined yesterday, and may not be very clever, but it is my attempt to put boundaries around what qualifies as “erudition”, at least as relates to the number of books a person has read.
For someone to have read 4,800 books during their life is outstanding. Most of us would likely agree that person is quite erudite. Of course, this assumes the “Voracious” reader has been reading “literature,” and not romance novels, sports books, or (Heaven forbid) the endless stream of business books.
The upper end of this scale is something on the order of 20,000 books. Perhaps that limit could be pushed to 25,000, but I doubt very much that anyone has read more than that. I could be wrong.
It is important to note that this first dimension of erudition is nothing more than the total number of books read over the course of someone’s life. This book count has nothing to do with the other crucial dimensions of the analysis. Of particular importance are (a) how well did the person comprehend what the author was trying to say and (b) how much of that knowledge gained could be called up on a moment’s notice when needed . . . at the Socratic Club, for example.
In the next post, I will put a stake in the ground as to how many books I believe C.S. Lewis read. Of course, my speculation is not correct . . . but I do think it is directionally-correct.
Part 9 | Page 10 | Page 11
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