updated 7h ago
Anaximander: And the Birth of Science
Same language, mathematics, epicycles, deferents, tables of trigonometric functions, techniques, same general structure, same meticulousness, and same immense, vast vision.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
Reality is thus not a hypothetical ultimate unknowable entity; it is that about which we do learn and know.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
Instead of recognizing the written word, one could simply pronounce it and recognize it by the sound, even without preliminary knowledge of the particular written word in the
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
The meeting of classical Greek culture and the ancient lore of Egypt, when Alexander the Great drove into the streets of Babylonia and Alexandria, led to the great era of Alexandrian science.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
It had been known since the third century BCE, when Eratosthenes, the director of the Great Library of Alexandria, measured it using a brilliant theoretical and observational technique.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
The act from which this legitimacy emanates is rite, and the foundation of this legitimacy relies upon the Ultimate Sacred Postulates.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
Scientific predictions are important for at least two reasons: they make technical applications possible (calculating whether a roof will collapse without need to wait for a snowfall), and they are our key tool for corroborating (or falsifying) a theory. (Copernicus began to be taken seriously only after Galileo saw the phases of Venus predicted by
... See morefrom Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
Custom was that every high priest set up a statue of himself there during his lifetime. Pointing to these and counting, the priests showed me that each high priest succeeded his father.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago
Similarly, Darwin resolved a problem that was not a problem at all in nineteenth-century biology, because his contemporaries were convinced that they already knew the answer.
from Anaximander: And the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli
Tim Tensen added 6mo ago