He suggests that it was the combination of having the first fully phonetic simple alphabet, the lack of dominant royalty and the independence of the city states that enabled this revolution in thinking in Miletus where Anaximander was based.

From Boltzmann to quantum theory, from Einstein to loop quantum gravity, our understanding of time has been undergoing radical transformations. Time flows at a different speed in different places, the past and the future differ far less than we might think, and the very notion of the present evaporates in the vast universe.In this, Rovelli suggests, he sends perhaps his most potent message through the ages, “one that can serve as a warning to us today”. Wintering is a poignant and comforting meditation on the fallow periods of life, times when we must retreat to care for and repair ourselves. 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. He makes a polemical case that the culture in which the Greek’s wisdom of doubt was nurtured contained, for the first time, all the elements necessary for scientific advance. In this book Rovelli presents his view of science and why he believes Anaximander deserves the credit for starting the enterprise.

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”.

Carlo Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the physics of space and time. And it was no coincidence that Anaximander’s revolutionary thinking also coincided with the birth of the polis – the nascent democratic structures built on debate as to how best to govern society.

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. 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.

I know it would not discredit his scientific inquiry or process and I trust Carlo Rovelli would agree. Maybe Carlo Rovelli need not answer these questions or maybe he thinks these are questions not worth asking. 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. 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.

Do recent observations of near death experiences offer valid answers to whether human beings have a soul? For instance, the sun is and will be the center of the solar system because all known planetary bodies revolve around it.The next step Rovelli takes is to try to understand why 6th century BC Greece was pretty well the only such starting point. 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. But this book teaches me that the answers will not be obtained from pure observation of physical phenomena. What Rovelli attributes to Anaximander are the idea of a non-flat Earth floating in space - surrounded by the heavens, rather than a flat Earth with the heavens above; building on Thales' example as the first known explanation for physical processes without divine intervention; introducing the concept of natural law; and challenging his master's ideas rather than simply building on them. 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.