In an unrestricted sense, a book is the compositional whole of which such sections, whether called books or chapters or parts, are parts. Each part of Aristotle's Physics is called a book. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained.
A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page.Īs an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. The technical term for this physical arrangement is codex (plural, codices). A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover.
