Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

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This very clear theoretical aim, which he clearly explains at the beginning of the book, also implies that even if we've got some relatively small number of facts about Anaximander wrong, that doesn't nullify the claim that, based on the written traces at our disposal, several defining characteristics of science and the scientific mindset (such as constitute Rovelli's focus in this book) were first conceived in the Greece of the VI century BCE. Even more importantly, Anaximander's ideas provide Rovelli with a compact historical and philosophical signpost, so that Rovelli can take the cue from this to talk, as a scientist, about science itself. For the science and "religion" essays, I found them interesting and thought provoking. Rovelli explores what science is, and he talks about the philosophy of science well. He seems well-acquainted with the various theories that have been put forth, and does not favor any one side too strongly (I think a nice summary of the ideas, and his own thoughtful definition, if one could call it that). He explores what drives us to look for explanations, what that might mean, and ends reinforcing that accepting uncertainty is a crucial part of humanity's improvement of the past millenia. Rovelli has written more than 200 scientific articles published in international journals. He has published two monographs on loop quantum gravity and several popular science books. His book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, has been translated into 41 languages. Books discovered in drawers by publishers should often have been left there…Anaximander?… Shouldn’t he stay in the dusty cabinet too? Absolutely not: Anaximander is a delight and so is this book” —Sunday Times (UK)

Something very startling happened in Miletus, the ancient Greek city on the modern Turkish coast, in about 600BC. That something, physicist Carlo Rovelli argues in this enjoyable and provocative little book, occurred in the interaction between two of the place’s greatest minds. The first, Thales, one of the seven sages of ancient Greece, is often credited as the pioneer in applying deductive reasoning to geometry and astronomy; he used his mathematics, for example, to predict solar eclipses. Wondrous as this was, it was the reaction of the second man, Thales’s fellow citizen, Anaximander, 11 years his junior that, Rovelli argues, changed the world. Anaximander assimilated Thales’s ideas, treated them with due respect, but then rejected and improved on them and came up with more exact theories of his own. Likewise, Plato’s rationalist dialectic has roots in dialogue and debate of a conceptual sort, and is embedded in his idealist metaphysic of “forms”, at best a distant kin to modern science. Rovelli, a contemporary physicist, uses the accomplishments of Anaximander of Miletus, the pre-Socratic thinker who is credited with writing the first prose work and whom Rovelli describes as the first scientist, as a springboard for meditations on the nature of science and its history. The book is well-written, and although Rovelli is not a historian or philosopher of science I didn't find anything which was obviously wrong, as I often do with books about ancient philosophy. Our knowledge, like the Earth, floats in nothingness,” Mr Rovelli says. “Its provisional nature and the underlying void do not make life meaningless; they make it more precious.” This book offers a timely rebuttal to those who would sacrifice the vital legacy of Western science—and the progress that comes with it—on the altar of cultural sensitivity or by retreating to the safety of metaphysical revelation. ■ Greece is presented as being unique because it sat betwixt and between other powerful civilisations – with Egypt, for instance, proving much older than the Greeks even believed the world to have been. The constant friction these other civilisations provided allowed room in Greece for a kind of radical doubt.

Rovelli's first book is on the Italian student political movements in the 1970s. [26] He later refused to compulsory military draft and was briefly detained. As Rovelli’s fans will expect, this book is excellent. It is never less than engaging, and enviably compendious.”— The Telegraph (UK) Anaximander wrote a treatise in prose called On Nature. This book is now lost and only one fragment remains quoted by Simplicius of Cilicia in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics: Anaximander is traditionally credited with introducing the use of the gnomon to the Greek world, perhaps from Babylonia. A gnomon is a rod set vertically in the ground. By measuring the length of the shadow it casts, one can determine the Sun’s altitude. A complex astronomy of the Sun’s movements can be developed using a gnomon.

Over two millennia ago, the prescient insights of Anaximander paved the way forcosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. His legacy includesthe revolutionary ideasthat the Earth floats in a void,that animals evolved, that the world can be understood innatural rather than supernatural terms, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. Heintroduced a new mode of rational thinkingwith an openness to uncertainty and the progress of knowledge.The Earth is a body of finite dimensions floating in space. It doesn’t fall because there is no particular direction toward which it might fall. It is “dominated by no other body.” van Fraassen, Bas C. (11 July 2009). "Rovelli's World" (PDF). Foundations of Physics. 40 (4): 390–417. Bibcode: 2010FoPh...40..390V. doi: 10.1007/s10701-009-9326-5. S2CID 17217776. Si parte da quello che l'autore considera il primo scienziato ante-litteram, Anassimandro, per allargarsi ad una riflessione più ampia sul ruolo della scienza e del pensiero critico. Carlo Rovelli has written a book about Anaximander who was born around 610BCE in Miletus in modern day Turkey and then goes on to discuss the nature of science and how progress is made by people reimagining the world on a continual basis. Zwanzig, R. (1973). "Nonlinear generalized Langevin equations". Journal of Statistical Physics. 9 (3): 215–220. Bibcode: 1973JSP.....9..215Z. doi: 10.1007/BF01008729. S2CID 121594079.