Anaximander: And the Nature of Science

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Wondrous as this was, it was the reaction of the second man, Thales’s fellow citizen, Anaximander, 11 years his junior that, Rovelli argues, changed the world. In evolving the thinking of Thales, we’re told, Anaximander was not only the first human to argue that rain was caused by the observable movements of air and the heat of the sun rather than the intervention of gods – the kind of “natural wisdom” that was heretical enough to lead to the trial and death of Socrates 200 years later – he was, crucially, also the first thinker to make the case that the Earth was a body suspended in a void of space, within which the sun and stars did not form a canopy or ceiling but revolved. If Newton characterised himself as “standing on the shoulders of giants”, then the two men near the very base of that human pyramid were Anaximander and Thales of Miletus. Is it necessary to hold that Anaximander was an atheist or naturalist and that Anaximander’s break through in scientific inquiry and analysis wholly discredits a metaphysical or religious world view?

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. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and to the progress of knowledge. He examines Anaximander as a scientist interested in shedding light on the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in his rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. These factors have an urgent relevance, he suggests, for the scientists and citizens and policymakers of today.

I found this a lot less interesting, partly because I'd seen most of it before, and partly because it is more a matter of paddling in the murky waters of philosophy of science rather than the more interesting (to me) origins of the history of science. Over two millennia ago, a Greek philosopher had a number of wondrous insights that paved the way to cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. Currently head of the quantum gravity group at the Centre de Physique Théorique at Aix-Marseille University, Rovelli became a household name after publishing his first books, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics and Reality Is Not What It Seems, which became international bestsellers. Rovelli has improved hugely since his early super-waffly titles - if you have an interest in where science came from, this is arguably his best so far.

By contrast, what Rovelli proposes is that Anaximander came up with a number of steps forward that were effectively foundational for the scientific method. This is the way forward, and everyone who cares about science should support their national organisation. Admittedly, Carlo Rovelli relies on one sentence left by Anaximander and some additional findings and analysis attributed to him.In this book Rovelli presents his view of science and why he believes Anaximander deserves the credit for starting the enterprise. Essentially he claims that Anaximander was the first person who looked for explanations of natural events, rather than crediting spirits of one sort or another with such effects . If I understand Carlo Rovelli’s position, there are absolute truths in each of these findings that cannot be undone even by following the type of scientific inquiry unleashed by Anaximander. He exercises that faith in an understanding that Anaximander was a naturalist; a man that expressed his knowledge of this world wholly independent, if not in contrast to, a metaphysical or religious understanding of the world. Something very startling happened in Miletus, the ancient Greek city on the modern Turkish coast, in about 600BC.

A reasonable person can deduce that proper analysis of physical phenomena utilizing physical phenomena arrives at truth.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. But this book teaches me that the answers will not be obtained from pure observation of physical phenomena. Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time.

He then goes on to discuss how, over the ages, society started to base knowledge on empirical evidence, rather than on the sayings of devine kings or ancient books. Carlo Rovelli implies that Anaximander was atheist, and precisely as such Anaximander altered the course of scientific inquiry by explaining physical phenomena in terms of physical phenomena. I know it would not discredit his scientific inquiry or process and I trust Carlo Rovelli would agree. For instance, the sun is and will be the center of the solar system because all known planetary bodies revolve around it.This literal groundbreaking idea – inventing at a stroke the idea of the cosmos – was, as the historian of science Karl Popper suggested, “one of the boldest, most revolutionary and most portentous ideas in the whole history of human thinking”. 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.