Black wolf, literature DOES have an existence which is independent of printed works. If every single copy of Don Quixote were to vanish from the face of the earth, the story of Don Quixote would remain intact. A great deal of poetry existed in "community" before and sometimes without ever making an appearance on any printed page. Every sentence a writer pens exists in his or her mind before they pen it. Every thought, every word, every number exists quite apart from its physical materialisation. I should have thought that was obvious, even if not directly relevant to the issue under discussion here. But prime numbers are actually among the clearest proofs of the pre-empirical non-material reality of certain truths. And even die-hard materialists like Dawkins find the appeal of the non-material irrestistible, as is evidenced in this article.