Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

In the field of knowledge, the discovery is that allowing free criticism and questioning, granting anyone the right to take part in discussions, and taking all proposals seriously does not result in an inconclusive cacophony. On the contrary, it leads to the rejection of the weak hypotheses and the emergence of the best ideas.

Moments of great cultural ferment always correspond with moments of great cultural encounters.

In other words, science is the discovery that the secret of knowledge is being open to learning, not believing that we have already tapped into ultimate truth. The reliability of science is based not on certainty but on a radical lack of certainty.

“Tradition” is nothing else than the codified thinking of human beings who lived at times when ignorance was even greater than ours.

Plato and Aristotle make a neat distinction between having an opinion and possessing convincing scientific arguments in support of it. I think that the average educated European or American of today knows that the Earth is round, but is probably not able to offer direct and convincing proof of this belief. His level of scientific understanding, at

We must choose between hiding away in empty truths or accepting the radical uncertainty of our knowledge—remaining, like the Earth, suspended in a void.

Philosophy school textbooks tell us that the first philosophical school was the Ionic school, which consisted of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.

Reality is thus not a hypothetical ultimate unknowable entity; it is that about which we do learn and know.

Second, we must construct a credible and consistent alternative to the old image of the world.