Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

Carlo Rovelli

Feb 2023 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Roy McMillan

About this audiobook

The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics illuminates the nature of science through the revolutionary ideas of the Greek philosopher Anaximander

Over two millennia ago, the prescient insights of Anaximander paved the way for cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology, setting in motion a new way of seeing the world. His legacy includes the revolutionary ideas that the Earth floats in a void, that animals evolved, that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms, and that universal laws govern all phenomena. He introduced a new mode of rational thinking with an openness to uncertainty and the progress of knowledge.
 
In this elegant work, the renowned theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli brings to light the importance of Anaximander’s overlooked influence on modern science. He examines Anaximander not from the point of view of a historian or as an expert in Greek philosophy, but as a scientist interested in the deep nature of scientific thinking, which Rovelli locates in the critical and rebellious ability to reimagine the world again and again. Anaximander celebrates the radical lack of certainty that defines the scientific quest for knowledge.


* This audiobook ncludes a downloadable PDF of maps, landmarks, artifacts, and some of the earliest antiquities found and documented from ancient times.

Ratings and reviews

This is one of the laziest and lowest effort books I've ever listened too. The first half talks about Anaximander and his discoveries of course, but is probably little more than what the author read on Wikipedia. There's really very little historical insight in a book that is ostensibly about the history of science and philosophy. There's endless discussion about who really discovered what and how those discoveries ushered in radical changes in thought, but that's all totally subjective, and based only on the author's uninformed opinion. Eventually the author runs out of things to say about Anaximander, and rambles on about "modern science" and worthless platitudes about how we'll never really know anything but we should trust in science anyways. I bought this book on sale and I still feel ripped off. There was maybe 45 minutes of original thought.

About the author

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. He has worked in Italy and the United States and currently directs the quantum gravity research group of the Centre de Physique Théorique in Marseille, France. His books, including Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, The Order of Time, and Helgoland, are international bestsellers that have been translated into more than fifty languages.