Carlo Rovelli and Tom Holland on Anaximander, Radical Scientific Thinker
Art & Culture • 58m
‘In my opinion this idea of Anaximander’s [that the Earth is suspended in space] is one of the boldest, most revolutionary, and most portentous ideas in the whole history of human thinking.’ – Karl Popper
Carlo Rovelli is one of the world’s best known scientists. A theoretical physicist, his books have sold over two million copies around the world. In March 2023 Rovelli came to Intelligence Squared to talk about his favourite scientist, the little known Greek philosopher Anaximander, whose ideas, articulated over two millennia ago, lay the foundations for cosmology, physics, geography, meteorology, and biology. Anaximander's legacy includes the revolutionary ideas that the earth floats in a void; that the world can be understood in natural rather than supernatural terms; that animals evolved; and that universal laws govern all phenomena. Above all, he introduced a new mode of rational thinking – including an openness to fallibility and uncertainty – that defines the modern scientific quest for knowledge.
Anaximander and the Nature of Science was Rovelli’s first book and is now being published in English for the first time. In conversation with the award-winning historian Tom Holland, he showed how Anaximander opened up a path that we are still on today: one that requires us to accept the provisional nature of our knowledge and allows us to challenge, rebel against and create new images of our world.
Up Next in Art & Culture
-
Letters That Changed The World from L...
In this Intelligence Squared event award-winning historian Simon Sebag Montefiore and bestselling novelist Kate Mosse discussed letters by Michelangelo, Catherine the Great, Sarah Bernhardt, Rosa Parks, Virginia Woolf, Alan Turing and Leonard Cohen. Some are inspiring, some unsettling, others exp...
-
Marina Abramović on art, performance,...
‘The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing.’ – Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović is the most celebrated performance artist in the world. Over a career spanning four decades she has pioneered performance as an art form and accumulated a devoted following that includes Jay-Z a...
-
Greece vs Rome, with Boris Johnson an...
On November 19th Intelligence Squared hosted the ultimate clash of civilisations: Greece vs Rome. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London and ardent classicist, made the case for Greece; while Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Cambridge and redoubtable media star, championed Rome.
As Boris argued, the...
