Anaximander

A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Anaximander is a delight and so is this book' -- James McConnachie, Sunday Times

Now widely available in English for the first time, this is Carlo Rovelli's first book: the thrilling story of a little-known man who created one of the greatest intellectual revolutions

Over two thousand years ago, one man changed the way we see the world.

Since the dawn of civilization, humans had believed in the heavens above and the Earth below. Then, on the Ionian coast, a Greek philosopher named Anaximander set in motion a revolution. He not only conceived that the Earth floats in space, but also that animals evolve, that storms and earthquakes are natural, not supernatural, that the world can be mapped and, above all, that progress is made by the endless search for knowledge.

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.

Translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg

Reviews

This is seriously astounding. So lucid, so imaginative, so subtle, and so large in scope. It's like the best primer you can imagine for the non-scientist on why what you think you know about Ptolemy and Copernicus, or Popper and Kuhn, is not quite right