Anaximander
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4.5 • 17 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
THIS BOOK WILL NO LONGER BE AVAILABLE AFTER SEPTEMBER 10, 2021.
Carlo Rovelli, a leading theoretical physicist, uses the figure of Anaximander as the starting point for an examination of scientific thinking itself: its limits, its strengths, its benefits to humankind, and its controversial relationship with religion. Anaximander, the sixth-century BC Greek philosopher, is often called the first scientist because he was the first to suggest that order in the world was due to natural forces, not supernatural ones. He is the first person known to understand that the Earth floats in space; to believe that the sun, the moon, and the stars rotate around it—seven centuries before Ptolemy; to argue that all animals came from the sea and evolved; and to posit that universal laws control all change in the world. Anaximander taught Pythagoras, who would build on Anaximander’s scientific theories by applying mathematical laws to natural phenomena.
In the award-winning The First Scientist: Anaximander and His Legacy, translated here for the first time in English, Rovelli restores Anaximander to his place in the history of science by carefully reconstructing his theories from what is known to us and examining them in their historical and philosophical contexts. Rovelli demonstrates that Anaximander’s discoveries and theories were decisive influences, putting Western culture on its path toward a scientific revolution. Developing this connection, Rovelli redefines science as a continuous redrawing of our conceptual image of the world. He concludes that scientific thinking—the legacy of Anaximander—is only reliable when it constantly tests the limits of our current knowledge.
Customer Reviews
Much More Than a History Book…
If I could give this book a ten-star rating, I would. It is probably one of the most important books I have read in my life, although the title confirms a pet theory that, despite their brilliance, scientists are terrible at marketing. The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy sounds like a dusty tome about an Ancient Greek philosopher. In a way, it is, but the book is so much broader in its scope that the title does not do the work justice. A title along the lines of, The Journey Towards the Truth would have much more sex-appeal and more aptly describe the arc of the this treatise.
The story of Anaximander is used as wrapping for the real story in this book. He is held out as the father of a scientific approach to explaining the world, a revolutionary thinker who breaks with the tradition of ascribing the workings of nature to the hidden power of mystical beings given a myriad of names. He articulates the concept of theory following from observation (with the testing part coming later), a naturalistic search for cause and effect. As a student of history and science, I found this historical antecedent interesting, but far from the most compelling aspect of the story.
The real power of this book, however, is in giving the readers a perspective on the tension, over time, in explanations of the universe in which we live that are based actions and words of a host of deities, as revealed though their supposed prophets, and that which is revealed through the power of human-kinds powers of observation, rational analysis and testing. The latter approach, of course, has brought us all the advancements in science, Doctor Rovelli posits that Anaximander is the father of this more analytical approach to exposing the world around us, the message of this book is much broader and more important than the story of this ancient figure from ancient Greece.