Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

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.

He succeeded on the basis of the opposite strategy: he assumed the gist of Galileo and Newton’s relativity—namely the equivalence of inertial systems of reference or the fact that velocity is relative—to be correct. At the same time, he assumed Maxwell’s equations and the essential aspect of Maxwell’s theory—namely the existence of physical fields—

Hecataeus had traced his descent and claimed that his sixteenth forefather was a god, but the priests traced a line of descent by counting the statues, and these were three hundred and forty-five.

The act from which this legitimacy emanates is rite, and the foundation of this legitimacy relies upon the Ultimate Sacred Postulates.

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.

Anaximander’s greatness lies in the fact that on the basis of so little, in order to better account for his observations, he redesigns the universe.

But the space of thinkable thoughts is infinite, and we have explored only an infinitesimal fraction so far. The world stands before us, waiting to be explored.

reflect only early difficulties and the rudimentary state of a first attempt to realize such a program.

Substituting a judge for a priest, a parliament for the pope, a voting booth or attendance at school for Mass does not change this structure substantially. By enacting their rites again and again, human beings renew the social pact and, at the same time, anchor on a simple gesture their labile and vagabond thoughts about the world.