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A review by likecymbeline
Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
3.5
Have I read all of the popularly-published works of Rovelli by now? I think I have, with this one having been elusive for quite a while, but one I really enjoyed and would quickly recommend to others. It's difficult to write about someone we have minimal extant resources about. Nothing he wrote survives, except for quoted or paraphrased fragments. People wrote about him centuries after his existence, citing lost sources, and retouching the past with their own surrounding context. Still, this book manages to be about the scientific mindset, about curiosity and natural wonder.
I love the emphasis on the godlessness of Anaximander's pursuits. I know it won't flatter (to most minds) to set this next to Machiavelli, but I had read before that The Prince is a highly singular text due to its particular atheism (not even anti-theism, just atheism) that is startling in comparison with their peers. The same is true here. Whether political or natural science, we remove the interference of religion and study what is, independently of imposed morality or superstition.
I mean, I'm an atheist too and I think am on the same page as Rovelli who says we can experience the sublime and the wondrous in the world, we can feel enchanted and experience moments of transcendence, but there's nothing magic in it. And interrogating our world scientifically and philosophically is the source of just as much awe and splendour.
I love the emphasis on the godlessness of Anaximander's pursuits. I know it won't flatter (to most minds) to set this next to Machiavelli, but I had read before that The Prince is a highly singular text due to its particular atheism (not even anti-theism, just atheism) that is startling in comparison with their peers. The same is true here. Whether political or natural science, we remove the interference of religion and study what is, independently of imposed morality or superstition.
I mean, I'm an atheist too and I think am on the same page as Rovelli who says we can experience the sublime and the wondrous in the world, we can feel enchanted and experience moments of transcendence, but there's nothing magic in it. And interrogating our world scientifically and philosophically is the source of just as much awe and splendour.