Our knowledge, like the Earth, floats in nothingness,” Mr Rovelli says. “Its provisional nature and the underlying void do not make life meaningless; they make it more precious.” This book offers a timely rebuttal to those who would sacrifice the vital legacy of Western science—and the progress that comes with it—on the altar of cultural sensitivity or by retreating to the safety of metaphysical revelation. ■ Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations , because at first reading I could not make much sense of it, but I expected it to be a mine of ideas. I am slowly advancing into it, and this time it is not disappointing. The Ethics by Baruch Spinoza, the major western philosopher. It is difficult to penetrate at first, because of the abstruse and off-putting pseudo-mathematical language. With a bit of perseverance, the fog dissipates and the book becomes a sweet and deep exploration not just of the structure of reality but also of our emotions and values. It is the book that secured my atheism. Every time I met a young woman I liked, in my mind there was Odysseus, seeing Nausicaa playing ball with her maids The effort to reconstruct Anaximander's ideas from indirect sources has been extensive, but does ultimately show that this man was the first to undertake scientific thinking as we know it today. Anaximander was always searching for knowledge to progress his understanding of the world.

The premise of this short book seemed unpromising: a physicist with no formal training in classics or history was apparently claiming that Anaximander, a Greek philosopher about whom almost nothing is known, is the spiritual father of modern science. But, in the event, it was much better than I'd expected. Rovelli is certainly not a historian, but he appears to know Latin and Greek, has read widely, and had enough interesting things to say that he kept me thoroughly entertained. I started this afternoon at Luton airport, and didn't put it down until I finished just now in Geneva. Caldeira, A. O.; Leggett, A. J. (1981). "Influence of Dissipation on Quantum Tunneling in Macroscopic Systems". Physical Review Letters. 46 (4): 211–214. Bibcode: 1981PhRvL..46..211C. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.46.211. ISSN 0031-9007.The final chapter where he takes on religion is the only really weak part of the book, as anti-religious polemic usually is -- I think it's necessary, but so little is understood about the origins of religion that there is much speculation, as Rovelli admits. His choice of writers to discuss on the subject is obviously subjective and not the writers I would probably choose myself. A deep-thinking, restlessly inquiring spirit’: Carlo Rovelli. Photograph: Roberto Serra/Iguana Press/Getty Images For the science and "religion" essays, I found them interesting and thought provoking. Rovelli explores what science is, and he talks about the philosophy of science well. He seems well-acquainted with the various theories that have been put forth, and does not favor any one side too strongly (I think a nice summary of the ideas, and his own thoughtful definition, if one could call it that). He explores what drives us to look for explanations, what that might mean, and ends reinforcing that accepting uncertainty is a crucial part of humanity's improvement of the past millenia. The transformation of one thing into another is regulated by “necessity,” which determines how phenomena unfold in time. Some authors report that Anaximander was the first to measure the obliquity of the ecliptic (the path that the Sun appears to trace in the sky during the year). This is possible if, as seems likely, he made systematic use of the gnomon, since the obliquity of the ecliptic is the primary natural measurement shown by the gnomon.

Abold and persuasive case that this ancient Greek philosopher scientist was… the founder of critical thinking.”— Adam Rutherford, Start the Week Anaximander wrote a treatise in prose, On Nature (Περι ́ φυ ́σεως), now lost. Only one fragment remains, quoted by Simplicius of Cilicia in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics… Much has been written about this handful of obscure words, which can easily inspire fanciful interpretations. It is always difficult to interpret a passage out of its context with any degree of certainty. It is not this fragment of direct evidence that tells us what is interesting in Anaximander’s ideas. Instead, many Greek sources relay the content of Anaximander’s book… their intelligence – this makes a huge difference for a speaker. In the Oxford audience I encountered many experts in the field my book covered and even one of the ambassadors I’d quotedThis position led him to face the following problem: if time is not part of the fundamental theory of the world, then how does time emerge? In 1993, in collaboration with Alain Connes, Rovelli proposed a solution to this problem called the thermal time hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, time emerges only in a thermodynamic or statistical context. If this is correct, the flow of time is not fundamental, deriving from the incompleteness of knowledge. Similar conclusions had been reached earlier in the context of nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, in particular in the work of Robert Zwanzig, and in Caldeira-Leggett models used in quantum dissipation. [14] [15] Relational quantum mechanics [ edit ] Alan Lightman (14 May 2018). "Benedict Cumberbatch Meets Albert Einstein in Carlo Rovelli's New Audiobook". The New York Times . Retrieved 1 October 2019. In 2021, he coordinated the Global Peace Dividend, an open letter signed by more that 50 Nobel Laureates, including the Dalai Lama, calling for all countries to negotiate a balanced cut on their military spending by 2% a year for the next five years, and put half the saved money in a UN fund to combat pandemics, the climate crisis, and extreme poverty. [27] On May first 2023, Rovelli gave a political speech at the large Italian Labour Day concert in Rome, inviting the youth to engage politically for the environment, economical equality and peace, and criticizing the Italian Defence Minister Guido Crosetto for his direct involvement with the industrial military complex. The speech raised a large controversy. [28] As a consequence, his invitation to represent Italy at the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair was cancelled; the cancellation itself was widely criticized, leading to his re-invitation, [29] and the resignation of the Italian Commissary for the Buchmesse. [30] Rovelli repeated his call for reduced military spending and improved international cooperation following the outbreak of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. [31] Carlo Rovelli, Relative information at the foundation of physics (Marseille, CPT & Toulon U.). October 31, 2013. 3 pp.; Published in "It from Bit or Bit from It? On Physics and information", A Aguirre, B Foster and Z Merali eds., 79-86 (Springer 2015)

For Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, all citizens of Miletus, a Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, doubt was a birthright. Positioned between the more ancient civilisations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and possessing all the natural curiosity of a young, mercantile society, the residents of Miletus were exposed to a variety of beliefs. They could test one doctrine against another, while being beholden to none and sceptical of all. “Civilisations flourish when they mingle,” Mr Rovelli says. “They decline in isolation.”Our world is understood to be non-deterministic and essentially unpredictable; moreover it works in ways that often strike us as non-intuitive. Quantum theory invites us to see the world as a giant cat’s cradle of relations, where objects exist only in terms of their interaction with one another. Ultimately, says Rovelli, Heisenberg’s is a theory of how things “influence” one another. It forms the basis of all modern technologies from computers to nuclear power, lasers, transistors and MRI scanners. These factors have an urgent relevance, he suggests, for the scientists and citizens and policymakers of today. For a start, the Miletus of 2,600 years ago was a time and place in which the ability to read and write moved beyond a limited circle of elite scribes. The effect of extending education far and wide was instantaneous. And it was no coincidence that Anaximander’s revolutionary thinking also coincided with the birth of the polis – the nascent democratic structures built on debate as to how best to govern society. Once people started seeing power as negotiable then everything else became debatable too. “Alongside the desacralisation and secularisation of public life,” Rovelli argues, “which passed from the hands of divine kings to those of citizens, came the desacralisation and secularisation of knowledge… law was not handed down once and for all but was instead questioned again and again.” As Rovelli’s fans will expect, this book is excellent. It is never less than engaging, and enviably compendious.”— The Telegraph (UK)

In 2022 Rovelli appeared in the Netflix documentary A Trip to Infinity, [47] discussing the mathematical implications of infinity. What Anaximander does is remarkable. But I’m not convinced by Rovelli that Anaximander’s thought traces the beginning of a solid line toward modern science. With Francesca Vidotto, Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity: An Elementary Introduction to Quantum Gravity and Spinfoam Theory, Cambridge University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-1107069626 All I really knew about Anaximander was that he had proposed an early cosmology, with a cylindrically shaped Earth and the light of the Sun and stars produced by fire contained in rings that had holes in to let the light out. This was interesting, but not necessarily hugely inspiring. By contrast, what Rovelli proposes is that Anaximander came up with a number of steps forward that were effectively foundational for the scientific method. 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.Anaximander was one of the world’s first scientists and had some amazingly modern theories, as Carlo Rovelli reveals International Xanthopoulos Award of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, "for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics" [32] In my experience, working scientists often get history of science wrong - in this case, as it's arguably more history of philosophy, I can't say whether or not Carlo Rovelli is straying far from what's known to make his point, but what he has to say about the Greek philosopher Anaximander from the 6th century BC is fascinating. Solid insights into the foundations of science…as usual, Rovelli communicates his ideas with clarity and verve.”— Kirkus 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.