A Kind of Compound-Interest Law

[Anon Oby]

"Libraries made education possible, and education in its turn added to libraries: the growth of knowledge followed by a kind of compound-interest law, which was greatly enhanced by the invention of printing."

Source: The Personality of Man by G. N. M. Tyrrell

I'd say this 'law' is some big achievement in the human history, yet I'm not quite firm about it. Maybe it's a figurative way to express the tendency of knowledge accumulation?

 

[probus]

It is hard to express mathematical concepts without using mathematical notation. If i is the annual interest on $1, then after n years a dollar will have grown to (1 + i) raised to the nth power. Does that help you?