Anaximander by Carlo Rovelli (2007): my notes from book

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  • Anaximander (born 610 BCE) is the second Miletus, PreSocratic philosopher after Thales. 
  • The PreSocratic philosophers looked for a single first, origin principle to explain the natural world.
    • Thales claimed the first principle was water.
    • Anaximander claimed the first principle was apeiron, the indefinite or infinite.
    • Anaximenes claimed the first principle was air.
  • Rovelli claims Anaximander was the first scientist. 
    • Page 103-4: "If by 'science' we mean research based on systematic experimental activities, then it began more or less with Galileo. If we mean a collection of quantitative observations and theoretical/mathematical models that can order these observations and give accurate predictions, then the astronomy of Hipparchus and Ptolemy is science...." Anaximander introduced the process of first mastering the thought of predecessors, identifying errors and making improvements, thus building scientific knowledge. Compared to merely accepting and expanding on ideas of predecessor.
    • Unlike Thales' water and Anaximenes' air, Anaximander's first principle, apeiron, was an invisible entity like electrons, fields, gravity used in later scientific explanations.
    • Anaximander imagined that nature evolves by necessity, following natural laws, rather than haphazardly.
  • Anaximander made a number of amazing claims.
    • He proposed the hydrological cycle to explain rain and other precipitation.
    • He imagined earth floating unsupported in open space without falling. Rovello considers this the first and possibly greatest of scientific revolutions. (He imagined earth as a flat cylinder, not a sphere. Spherical earth is first mentioned in Plato, but without evidence.)
    • He imagined outer space having depth, i.e., sun, moon, and stars were different distances from the earth as opposed to being on a 2D flat dome/vault. (Stars are closest to earth, followed by the moon and sun. Each was on its own wheel.)
    • He claimed all animals originally came from the sea or from primal humidity that once covered the earth. The first animals were fish or fish-like creatures which eventually moved onto land as the seas dried up. 
    • He drew the first map of the earth. Europe, Asia, and Africa, each of approximately the same size and separated by rivers. The whole surrounded by the ocean.
  • Page 111-2: "Science exists because we are very ignorant and we hold a vast number of mistaken assumptions. Science is born of what we don't know ('What's behind that hill?') and challenges what we think we know, but does not stand up to factual proof or reasoned critical analysis. We used to think that Earth was flat, then that it was the center of the universe. We thought that bacterial were born spontaneously from inanimate matter. We thought that Newton's laws were correct. With each new discovery, the world changes before our eyes. We come to know and see it in a different and better way."
  • Page 123: "Why is science trustworthy if it is always changing? .... The answer is simple: because at any given moment of our history, this description of the world is the best we have. The fact that it can be bettered does not diminish the fact that it is a sharp instrument for understanding the world. No one throws away a knife because they think that, someday, a sharper knife must exist. In fact, the evolutionary nature of science, far from being a source of unreliability, is the very reason for its trustworthiness. Scientific answers are not definitive: they are, almost by definition, the best ones that we have at any given time."
  • Page 124: "Thus, the reliability of science is not based on the fact that its answers are certain. It is based on the fact that its answers are the best available ones. They are the best available ones because science is a way of thinking in which nothing is considered certain, and therefore remains open to adopt better answers if better ones become available. In other words, science is the discovery that the secret of knowledge is being open to learning, not believing that we have already tapped into ultimate truth. The reliability of science is based not on certainty but on a radical lack of certainty."
  • Page 180: "Scientific thinking is, therefore, a continuous quest for novel ways of conceptualizing the world. Knowledge is born from a respectful by radical act of rebellion against what we currently think. This is the richest heritage the West has bequeathed to today's global culture, its finest contribution."