Anaximander

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That process, the idea that knowledge was something not handed down by gods or elders, but evolving, something to be quickly interrogated and built upon, set in motion, Rovelli argues, what we understand as the scientific method.

He explains some of the most conceptually difficult and densest areas of physics lightly and breezily.As a stand-alone proposition, it is the least bit enlightening, but after reading this book I can appreciate that Anaximander’s contribution to scientific inquiry and analysis was monumental, as Carlo Rovelli teaches. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.

This new freedom to doubt received wisdom was crucial in Anaximander revealing what it took Chinese stargazers – advanced in many other respects – another 2,000 years to acknowledge: that the Earth was suspended in space. It was implicit in Miletus’s geography as a trading city in which Greek and Egyptian and Babylonian cultures met. He attributes Anaximander’s analysis of the physical world as wholly devoid of a metaphysical or religious system as though Anaximander did not or could not attribute some aspect of his existence or existence in general to factors not fully attainable through observation of physical phenomena.In this book Rovelli presents his view of science and why he believes Anaximander deserves the credit for starting the enterprise. Half of the book is a collection of thoughts of Rovelli about the role of science and its main characteristics: simple but important concepts. Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most - when people's lives were at stake. He makes a polemical case that the culture in which the Greek’s wisdom of doubt was nurtured contained, for the first time, all the elements necessary for scientific advance.