In rereading my Glaucoma Letter, especially my essay about the origin of
open angle glaucoma, I am reminded that Pierre Abelard, Thomas Aquino,
Nikolaus von Kues and many other medieval authors were clerics. Their
teachings received attention not because of the inherent quality of their
ideas, but because of their functions as teachers, because they were the
foci of public attention. I thought then about my account in the opening
chapter of Döhring of the Bible as the prototypical book, demonstrative
of the nature of reading and writing. What I failed to mention, perhaps 
because I had not yet understood it, is that it is a social concern
that persuades us to read the Bible. We read it because it's what everybody
else is reading, because it was written (inspired) by God himself,
because it's been on the best seller lists for ages, and we do not 
want to be left out.