Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

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Anassimandro è uno dei filosofi pre-socratici, che spesso scivola anonimo tra le prime lezioni di filosofia al liceo. Ma in questo libro (e ricordo un simile accenno nei documentari di Carl Sagan) lo si eleva a prima incarnazione storica dello spirito "scientifico", non essendosi accontentato nelle sue spiegazioni dei fenomeni naturali di tirare in ballo gli dei, ma avendo elaborato una proposta del tutto fisica. 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. Carlo Rovelli was born in Verona, Italy, on 3 May 1956. He attended the Liceo Classico Scipione Maffei in Verona. In the 1970s, he participated in the student political movements in Italian universities. He was involved with the free political radio stations Radio Alice in Bologna and Radio Anguana in Verona, which he helped found. [7] In conjunction with his political activity, he was charged, but later released, for crimes of opinion related to the book Fatti Nostri, which he co-authored with Enrico Palandri, Maurizio Torrealta, and Claudio Piersanti. [8] a new model of the shape and position of earth (not flat, resting on a foundation of some sort, but a cylinder freely floating in the universe)

Consegnato a Carlo Rovelli il premio "Alassio per l'Informazione Culturale" ". Ecodisavona (in Italian) . Retrieved 6 April 2018. Il progetto Pagine di scienza premia il prof Rovelli". Il Tirreno (in Italian). 23 March 2015 . Retrieved 6 April 2018.

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Mr Rovelli’s book, first published in French in 2009 and newly translated into English, is not a straight biography, as little is known of Anaximander’s life and hardly any of his original writing survives. Instead, it focuses on his revolutionary idea that the best way to uncover nature’s secrets is to question everything. Anaximander built his own cosmology on the work of past sages, interrogating their theories and making corrections where needed. He invented a process that allowed knowledge to grow from generation to generation, and enabled humanity to reap the benefits. The book has many thought-provoking examples that I had not previously come across; here is the one I liked most. Rovelli is discussing the question of cultural relativism. Different societies have different belief systems, and on what grounds can we say that one is "better" or "more true" than another? It is fashionable, at least in some circles, to say that the terms make no sense. But Rovelli has a nice case study concerning the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes, who accurately measured the circumference of the Earth in the third century B.C. by comparing the shadows cast at widely separated locations. This part of the story is famous; what I hadn't heard was that a Chinese astronomer performed the same experiment several centuries later, but reached completely different conclusions. The Chinese believed that the Earth was flat, so the astronomer, seeing the different shadows, thought that he had determined the distance to the Sun, which would have been quite close. The interesting thing is what happened when the Chinese and Western traditions finally collided in the early 17th century. The Westerners just smiled at the misapprehensions of the Chinese astronomers; the Chinese, on the other hand, rapidly agreed that they had got it wrong. There was no question of the two accounts being different but equally valid. Rovelli has written a book on the Greek philosopher Anaximander, published in France, Italy, US [21] and Brazil. The book analyses the main aspects of scientific thinking and articulates Rovelli's views on science. Anaximander is presented in the book as a main initiator of scientific thinking.

Carlo Rovelli on why time is not what it seems". BBC Radio 4. The Life Scientific. BBC . Retrieved 30 January 2020. As Rovelli’s fans will expect, this book is excellent. It is also a chance to see a slightly different Rovelli in action. Just hitting English shelves now, it was in fact published seven years before his million-copy-selling Seven Brief Lessons on Physics (2014) made him a star. Compared to his later books, Anaximander is both a little more guarded and a little more combative – and a little less convincing, when he strays into arguments about myth and religious thought – but it is never less than engaging, and enviably compendious. Despite its modest length Rovelli finds room for everything from a brief history of ancient Greek colonialism to critiques of Karl Popper and Thomas Kuhn, with disquisitions on religion, myth and Chinese astronomy thrown in for free. It also has the merit, for those of us who just cannot quite grasp quantum gravity, of leaving the Earth solid beneath our feet. Carlo Rovelli (born May 3, 1956) is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in France. [1] He is also currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute, [2] and core member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of Western University. [3] The Sun, the Moon, and the stars rotate around the Earth, forming complete circles. Immense wheels, similar to wagon wheels, carry them along. They are hollow inside (like a bicycle tire), filled with fire, and pierced along their inward-facing surface. The Sun, the Moon, and the stars that we see in the sky are the fire visible through these holes. The wheels are probably meant to explain why the planets don’t fall. The stars are on the wheels closest to us, the Moon on the middle wheel, and the Sun on the wheel farthest from us. Their distances from Earth are in the proportion 9:18:27.I primarily was expecting a good explanation of the history of Anaximander, and Rovelli does a great job of explaining what we know, and also what he thinks are the important scientific takeaways. His history of Anaximander is the facts as historians know it along with the cultural milieu of ancient Greece. As Rovelli explains, it doesn't really matter if Anaximander exists for some of these takeaways, so long as the idea originated from people (or a person) of the era. The idea of the Earth floating in space, of naturalistic accounts of nature (no supernatural explanations), and of accepting uncertainty are the breakthroughs inherent in Anaximander's work, and the groundwork for much of modern science. 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. knowledge as a progression of dialogue and debate based on questioning what has previously been thought A large part of the book is concerned with the question of what "science" is, and in what ways it differentiates itself from religion. Rovelli's central argument is that the distinguishing mark of science is that it is always willing to question established authority. This, above all, is why he wants to argue that Anaximander should be considered the founder of the scientific tradition. Anaximander's teacher, according to later authors, was Thales of Miletus; but rather than simply accepting his master's ideas as holy writ and further developing them, Anaximander changed them in many important ways. Even if the story is just a myth - Rovelli is happy to admit that the facts are extremely uncertain - I think he has a good point. This way of reasoning about things is historically unusual. The philosophical/scientific tradition may not have started exactly here, but it began around this point in time, and, if nothing else, Anaximander is a nice way of symbolizing the break with what had gone before. 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.