Anaximander
And the Nature of Science
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR
'Anaximander is a delight and so is this book' -- James McConnachie, Sunday Times
Now widely available in English for the first time, this is Carlo Rovelli's first book: the thrilling story of a little-known man who created one of the greatest intellectual revolutions
Over two thousand years ago, one man changed the way we see the world.
Since the dawn of civilization, humans had believed in the heavens above and the Earth below. Then, on the Ionian coast, a Greek philosopher named Anaximander set in motion a revolution. He not only conceived that the Earth floats in space, but also that animals evolve, that storms and earthquakes are natural, not supernatural, that the world can be mapped and, above all, that progress is made by the endless search for knowledge.
Carlo Rovelli's first book, now widely available in English, tells the origin story of scientific thinking: our rebellious ability to reimagine the world, again and again.
Translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg
Customer Reviews
ESSENTIAL READING
This is a readable and well researched deep dive into early Greek thinking about natural phenomena. It acts as a backdrop for his powerful and surely correct stance on the nature of scientific inquiry now as well as back then. I think it was unwise to go into the implications of this view for belief in a deity. But overall this makes a powerful link between ancient and modern scientific thought.