Anaximander

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He emphasises, for instance, that despite their impressive mathematics, astronomical observation and technological developments, Chinese philosophers and scientists never came up with the insight of a non-flat Earth floating in space, only switching to this viewpoint when they received information from missionaries in the seventeenth century.

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. That message, as relevant in Rovelli’s native Italy as in contemporary Britain, is this: “Each time that we – as a nation, a group, a continent or a religion – look inward in celebration of our specific identity we do nothing but lionise our own limits and sing of our stupidity.A reasonable person can deduce that proper analysis of physical phenomena utilizing physical phenomena arrives at truth. These factors have an urgent relevance, he suggests, for the scientists and citizens and policymakers of today. This new freedom to doubt received wisdom was crucial in Anaximander revealing what it took Chinese stargazers – advanced in many other respects – another 2,000 years to acknowledge: that the Earth was suspended in space. That process, the idea that knowledge was something not handed down by gods or elders, but evolving, something to be quickly interrogated and built upon, set in motion, Rovelli argues, what we understand as the scientific method.

He explains some of the most conceptually difficult and densest areas of physics lightly and breezily. Anaximander assimilated Thales’s ideas, treated them with due respect, but then rejected and improved on them and came up with more exact theories of his own. By contrast, what Rovelli proposes is that Anaximander came up with a number of steps forward that were effectively foundational for the scientific method. From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations.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. Never Split the Difference takes you inside his world of high-stakes negotiations, revealing the nine key principles that helped Voss and his colleagues succeed when it mattered the most - when people's lives were at stake.

The next step Rovelli takes is to try to understand why 6th century BC Greece was pretty well the only such starting point. Katherine May thoughtfully shows us how to come through these times with the wisdom of knowing that, like the seasons, our winters and summers are the ebb and flow of life.

Something very startling happened in Miletus, the ancient Greek city on the modern Turkish coast, in about 600BC.

At first this seemed like hyperbole from someone championing a particular favourite, but by the end of the book I was convinced.A former FBI hostage negotiator offers a new, field-tested approach to negotiating - effective in any situation. But this book teaches me that the answers will not be obtained from pure observation of physical phenomena. With his extraordinary charm and sense of wonder, bringing together science, philosophy and art, Carlo Rovelli unravels this mystery. 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 -- Sam Leith ― Twitter --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.