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The First Scientist: Anaximander and his legacy |
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| Aug7-11, 11:31 AM | #35 |
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The First Scientist: Anaximander and his legacy
Until recently the UK Amazon page for the new Anaximander book contained an error. Which fooled me. UK said the book was already on sale there and estimated it would take 12-14 days to fill the order. As of today they've corrected that mistake.
Also the cover design has been changed. The publisher's page shows a much better cover design than, say, a week ago. Piece of actual Greek stone carving: face of Anax in relief, with his name scratched at the top in what might be Attic caps. I'm thinking the book will probably actually be out next month.
That would make sense. The Romans copied enormous amounts of Greek artwork. And I can imagine Greeks of the Hellenistic period making artist-conception portraits of famous philosophers. The Hellenistic period in history was started by a guy who had Aristotle for his private tutor. I can't decide whether to call it mezzo-relievo or alto-relievo. I think it is mid-relief. No complete undercutting of the head. The cover photo of this mid-relief portrait seems to have been clarified with photoshop, or else taken with very good lighting---I'm glad to say. Not sure what "early Roman Empire" means in context of Charles Kahn's caption. Romans conquered Macedonia around 170 BCE. Alexander Great died around 330 BCE, he created a kind of Hellenistic cooperative sphere of influence (not exactly an empire). What would you say the dates are for the Hellenistic period? 330-170 BCE? Or more broadly 350-100 BCE? So maybe this Roman copy of head and torso Anaximander was done in 100 BCE. The Hellenistic period original might for example have been made during the lifetime of Archimedes 287-212 BCE. That was a time when Greeks determined the circumference of the Earth accurately to within 2%. (Eratothenes in Alexandria) and discovered that the sun was much farther away than the moon (more than 10 times farther, perhaps 20, Aristarchus on Samos, born 300 years after Anax, in 310 BCE) |
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| Aug7-11, 10:33 PM | #36 |
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In case of interest here is an excerpt of an online resource:
Timeline related to Greek Science and Technology 800 BCE Vowels were by the Greeks to consonants of Phoenician origin. 610 BCE Birth of Anaximander of Miletus. About 600 BCE Thales of Miletus (Θαλής ο Μιλήσιος ) arguing from the fact that wherever there is life, there is moisture, speculated that the basic stuff of nature is water, according to Aristotle. He brings Babylonian mathematical knowledge to Greece and uses geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. About 600 -501 BCE Sun dial (gnomon) in use in Greece and China. Theodorus of Samos credited with invention of ore smelting and casting, water level, lock and key, carpenter's square, and turning lathe. First water supply system in Athens has nine pipes leading to main well. About 585 BCE Thales of Miletus predicts a solar eclipse. About 560 BCE Anaximander (Αναξίμανδρος ο Μιλήσιος ) proposes that the Earth floats unsupported in space. Its surface is cylindrical. The “author of the first geometrical model of the world...” Charles Kahn Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology About 530 BCE Pythagoras (Πυθαγόρας ο Σάμιος ) discovered the dependence of musical intervals on the arithmetical ratios of the lengths of string at the same tension, 2:1 giving an octave, 3:2 the fifth, and 4:3 the fourth. He is also credited with a general formula for finding two square numbers the sum of which is also a square, namely (if m is any odd number), m2+{1/2(m2-1)}2={1/2(m2+1)}2. "The Pythagoreans and Plato [as well as the Renaissance Neo-Platonists] noted that the conclusions they reached deductively agreed to a remarkable extent with the results of observation and inductive inference. Unable to account otherwise for this agreement, they were led to regard mathematics as the study of ultimate, eternal reality, immanent in nature and the universe, rather than as a branch of logic or a tool of science and technology" (Boyer 1949:1). Consequently, when the Pythagoreans developed the theory of geometric magnitudes, by which they were able to compare two surfaces' ratio, they were led, for lack of a system which could handle irrational numbers, to the 'incommensurability problem': Applying the side of a square to the diagonal, no common rational measure is discoverable. Pythagoras proposes that sound is a vibration of air. About 510 BCE Almaeon of Crotona (Αλκμαίων ο Κροτωνιάτης ) a member of the Pythagorean medical circle, located the seat of perception in the brain, or enkephalos, and maintained that there were passages connecting the senses to the brain, a position he was said to have arrived at by dissections of the optic nerve. About 500 BCE Water system built by Eupalinus (Ευπαλίνος ο Μεγαρεύς) on Samos, three-quarter-mile-long tunnel, 20 meter deep, started simultaneously at both ends. Herodotus consider this as one of the three greatest Greek constructions. About 500 BCE Xenophanes examined fossils and speculated on the evolution of the earth. Alcmaeon, Greek physician, discovers Eustachian tubes c. -500 479-431 BCE Golden Age of Athens About 465 BCE Hippasus ('Ιππασος ο Μεταποντίνος) writes of a "sphere of 12 pentagons", which must refer to a dodecahedron About 450 BCE Anaxagoras of Athens taught that the moon shines with the light of the sun and so was able to explain the eclipses. About 440 BCE Leucippus of Miletus said that the world consisted in the void and atoms, which are imperceptible individual particles that differ only in size, shape, and position. That these particles were imperceptible meant they met Parmenides' objection to the Pythagorean's geometric points and, since they alone were unchanging, change could be explained as mere sense impressions. "It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that even in 1900 the only new idea to Leucippus's theory was that each chemical element was identified with a separate atomic species" (Park 1990:41). Oenopides of Chios (Οινοπίδης ο Χίος) probably created the first three of what became Euclid's 'postulates' or assumptions. What is postulated guarantees the existence of straight lines, circles, and points of intersection. That they needed to be postulated is because they require 'movement,' the possibility of which was challenged by the Eleatics (Szabó 1978:276-279). About 430-440 BCE Hippocrates of Chios squared the lune, a major step toward squaring the circle, probably using the theorem that circles are to one another as the squares of their diameters. He writes the Elements which is the first compilation of the elements of geometry Hippias of Elis (Ιππίας ο Ηλείος) invents the quadratrix which may have been used by him for trisecting an angle and squaring the circle. Prior to about 425 BCE Herodotus wrote the first scientific history; that is, he began by asking questions, rather than just telling what he thinks he knows. Moreover, these questions were "about things done by men at a determinate time in the past, [and the history itself ] exists in order to tell man what man is by telling him what man has done" (Collingwood 1946:18). About 425 BCE Theodorus of Cyrene (Θεόδωρος ο Κυρηναίος) shows that certain square roots are irrational. This had been shown earlier but it is not known by whom. Thebans use a flame-thrower at Delium. About 420 BCE Democritus of Abdera (Δημόκριτος ο Αβδηρίτης) developed Leucippus's atomic theory: Atoms vibrate when hitched together in solid bodies and exist in a space which is infinite in extent and in which each star is a sun and has its own world. He also produced two major concepts in the history of ideas concerning the brain--that thought was situated there and, anticipating the nervous system, that psychic atoms constituted the material basis of its communication with the rest of the body and the world outside. Socrates, and hence the Platonic school, followed Democritus in locating thought in the brain. About 387 BCE Plato founds his Academy in Athens About 375 BCE Archytas of Tarentum develops mechanics. He studies the "classical problem" of doubling the cube and applies mathematical theory to music. He also constructs the first automaton. About 370-360 BCE Eudoxus of Cnidus invented a model of twenty-seven concentric spheres by which he was able to calculate the sun's annual motions through the zodiac, the moon's motion including its wobble, and the planets' retrograde motion. He used what came much later to be called the 'exhaustion method' for area determination. This method involved inscribing polygons within circles, reducing the difference ad absurdum, and was wholly geometric since there was at that time no knowledge of an arithmetical continuum, at least among the Greeks. About 340 BCE Aristaeus writes Five Books concerning Conic Sections. Praxagoras of Cos discovers the difference between arteries and veins. About 335 BCE Strato, experiments with falling bodies and levers. About 330 BCE Heraclides of Pontus said that the earth turns daily on its axis "while the heavenly things were at rest..., considered the cosmos to be infinite..., [and] with the Pythagoreans, considered each planet to be a world with an earth-like body and with an atmosphere" (Dreyer 1906:123-125). He also suggested that Mercury and Venus have the sun at the center of their spheres. Pytheas navigated the British Isles and the northern seas and upon returning home wrote about an island that he called Thule or Ultima Thule Aristotle, describes image projection in terms of the camera obscura About 325 BCE Alexander orders his admiral, Nearchus, to explore the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf, and Euphrates Pytheas, tides are caused by moon 330 BCE ?? Diving bell used About 320 BCE Eudemus of Rhodes writes the History of Geometry. About 314 BCE The first reference to the pyroelectric effect by Theophrastus who noted that tourmaline becomes charged when heated. 310 BCE Birth of Aristarchus of Samos. About 300 BCE Eukleides, better known as Euclid, published his Elements, a reorganized compilation of geometrical proofs including new proofs and a much earlier essay on the foundations of arithmetic. Elements conclude with the construction of Plato's five regular solids. Euclidean space has no natural edge, and is thus infinite. In his Optica, he noted that light travels in straight lines and described the law of reflection. About 300 BCE Dicaiarch of Messina (350-290 BCE), Greek geographer introduces to the map making world the notion of latitude and longitude About 290-260 BCE Aristarchus of Samos, in On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, used trigonometry to estimate the size of the Moon and its distance by the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse. Archimedes and others said that he maintained that the Moon revolved around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun which remained stationary like the stars. 287 BCE Birth of Archimedes (Αρχιμήδης ο Συρακούσιος) 276 BCE Birth of Eratosthenes About 270 BCE Greek inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria includes gearing in clepsydras About 260-250 BCE Archimedes of Syracuse contributed numerous advances to science including the principle that a body immersed in fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid and the calculation of the value of pi. "His method was to select definite and limited problems. He then formulated hypotheses which he either regarded, in the Euclidean manner, as self-evident axioms or could verify by simple experiments. The consequences of these he then deduced and experimentally verified" (Crombie 1952:278). Description of the Loculus of Archimedes; Archimedean Polyhedra; Volume of Intersection of Two Cylinders; Archimedes' Cattle Problem. Principle of the lever , discovery of the principle of buoyancy About 245 BCE Callimachus of Cyrene, a scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria, "created for the first time a catalog of Greek literature covering 120,000 books, called the Pinakes or Tables About 240 BCE Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the diameter of the earth by measuring noontime shadows at sites 800 km. apart. Assuming the earth is a sphere, the measured angle between the sites is seven degrees and the circumference is about 50 times 800 km., or about 40,000 km. About 230 BCE Eratosthenes of Cyrene develops his sieve method for finding all prime numbers. Before the end of the third century BCE Astrolabes were in use for taking the angular distance between any two objects, usually the elevation in the sky of planets. In the early second century BCE Diocles, in On Burning Mirrors, proved the focal property of a parabola and showed how the Sun's rays can be made to reflect a point by rotating a parabolic mirror (Toomer 1978). About 225-210 BCE? Apollonius of Perga writes Conics. He introduced probably first the terms 'parabola' and 'hyperbola,' curves formed when a plane intersects a conic section, and 'ellipse,' a closed curve formed when a plane intersects a cone. About 134-127 BCE Hipparchus of Rhodes (Ιππαρχος ο Ρόδιος ) measured the year with great accuracy and built the first comprehensive star chart with 850 stars and a luminosity, or brightness, scale. He is credited with the discovery of the precision of the equinoxes, and seems to have been very impressed that either of two geometrically constructed hypotheses could 'save the appearance' of the path that a planet follows: One shows the planets moving in eccentric circles and the other moving in epicycles carried by concentric circles (Duhem 1908:8). THANKS to a German website "miahanas". Much of the timeline is taken from there and edited down to fit in one normalsize post. http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HistoricEvents.htm |
| Aug7-11, 11:16 PM | #37 |
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| Aug7-11, 11:27 PM | #38 |
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I'm glad you found it interesting! You might want to look at the source
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HistoricEvents.htm but it is like drinking from a firehose. I edited selectively from it. |
| Aug8-11, 03:50 AM | #39 |
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Very interesting, indeed. Thank you, Marcus.
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| Aug8-11, 10:14 AM | #40 |
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 From your link - a bibliography on publications related to Anaximander. http://www.dirkcouprie.nl/Anaximander-bibliography.htm |
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| Aug19-11, 10:04 AM | #41 |
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WhoWee, Fuzzyfelt, Apeiron, you might be interested in watching this short YouTube about the Antikythera device.
A scientist/historian/craftsman named Michael Wright made a lifesize working model. He operates the reconstructed device and explains it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eUibFQKJqI Eclipses get predicted by a spiral dial. Planets go around at varying speeds and do their proper retrograde motion (as seen from the earth.) It's "high Greek science"--very neat. |
| Aug20-11, 09:36 AM | #42 |
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I didn't appreciate the complexity of the device until viewing this video.
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| Aug21-11, 03:10 PM | #43 |
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I want to appreciate how fast the Aegean science tradition developed after it got started around 600 BCE. Arithmetic is a lot easier for me, intuitively, going forward so I am going to repeat some of the earlier timeline starting the yearcount around 600 BCE.
According to Wkpd, Thales was born in 624 BCE so he would have been 24 years old in 600 BCE when I start the count. It impressed me to see how fast things took off after that. I'm going to call the yearcount "AET" for "Aegean explanatory tradition". If that's too long to say, just call it "Aegean time". Thales et al started a style of explanation (that we now call "natural") involving substances, material process and mechanisms instead of the Olympian pantheon. They used ideas like evaporation, condensation, celestial wheels, spheres, force, periodic motion, and they asked what causes stuff like rain thunder earthquakes lunar phases. They asked about proportions. Let's gauge how fast this developed once it got rolling. I adapted this timeline from a German website and can't vouch for it in detail. -200 AET (=800 BCE) Phonetic Greek alphabet. The Ionian Greeks basically invented vowels, which the Phoenician alphabet they adopted did not have: Since Greek has fewer consonants than Phoenician, when applying the Phoenician alphabet they found they had some extra symbols left over. They assigned these unused Phoenician consonants to Greek vowell sounds. -24 AET (=624 BCE) Birth of Thales of Miletus, first documented searcher for systematic natural explanations. -10 AET Birth of Anaximander of Miletus (lived from -10 to 54 AET) About 0 AET (=600 BCE) Thales of Miletus (Θαλής ο Μιλήσιος ) arguing from the fact that wherever there is life, there is moisture, speculated that the basic stuff of nature is water, according to Aristotle. He brings Babylonian mathematical knowledge to Greece and uses geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. About 15 AET Thales predicts a solar eclipse (probably thanks to Babylonian records, not to basic understanding, but anyway...) About 40 AET Anaximander (Αναξίμανδρος ο Μιλήσιος ) proposes that the Earth floats unsupported in space. The “author of the first geometrical model of the world...” Charles Kahn Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. Proposed an explantation for rain: that it results from evaporation of water caused by the action of the sun. Proposed natural explanations for numerous other phenomena and suggested that land animals originated from sea life. About 70 AET Pythagoras (Πυθαγόρας ο Σάμιος; 30 to 110 AET ) discovered the dependence of musical intervals on the arithmetical ratios of the lengths of string at the same tension, 2:1 giving an octave, 3:2 the fifth, and 4:3 the fourth...Pythagoras proposed that sound is a vibration of air. About 90 AET Almaeon of Crotona (Αλκμαίων ο Κροτωνιάτης ) a member of the Pythagorean medical circle, located the seat of perception in the brain, or enkephalos, and maintained that there were passages connecting the senses to the brain, a position he was said to have arrived at by dissections of the optic nerve. About 100 AET Water system built by Eupalinus (Ευπαλίνος ο Μεγαρεύς) on Samos, three-quarter-mile-long tunnel, 20 meter deep, started simultaneously at both ends. Herodotus consider this as one of the three greatest Greek constructions. Theodorus of Samos credited with invention of ore smelting and casting, water level, lock and key, carpenter's square, and turning lathe. Xenophanes examined fossils and speculated on the evolution of the earth. About 135 AET Hippasus ('Ιππασος ο Μεταποντίνος) writes of a "sphere of 12 pentagons", which must refer to a dodecahedron About 150 AET Anaxagoras of Athens taught that the moon shines with the light of the sun and so was able to explain the eclipses. About 160 AET Leucippus of Miletus said that the world consisted in the void and atoms, which are imperceptible individual particles that differ only in size, shape, and position... Oenopides of Chios (Οινοπίδης ο Χίος) probably created the first three of what became Euclid's 'postulates' or assumptions... About 160-170 AET Hippocrates of Chios squared the lune, a major step toward squaring the circle, probably using the theorem that circles are to one another as the squares of their diameters. He writes the Elements which is the first compilation of the elements of geometry About 175 AET Theodorus of Cyrene (Θεόδωρος ο Κυρηναίος) shows that certain square roots are irrational. This had been shown earlier but it is not known by whom. About 180 AET Democritus of Abdera (Δημόκριτος ο Αβδηρίτης) developed Leucippus's atomic theory: Atoms vibrate when hitched together in solid bodies and exist in a space which is infinite in extent and in which each star is a sun and has its own world... About 213 AET Plato founds his Academy in Athens About 225 AET Archytas of Tarentum develops mechanics. He constructs (the first?) automaton. About 230-240 AET Eudoxus of Cnidus invented a model of twenty-seven concentric spheres by which he was able to calculate the sun's annual motions through the zodiac, the moon's motion including its wobble, and the planets' retrograde motion. He used what came much later to be called the 'exhaustion method' for area determination. This method involved inscribing polygons within circles, reducing the difference ad absurdum, and was wholly geometric since there was at that time no knowledge of an arithmetical continuum, at least among the Greeks. About 260 AET Aristaeus writes Five Books concerning Conic Sections. Praxagoras of Cos discovers the difference between arteries and veins. About 265 AET Strato, experiments with falling bodies and levers. About 270 AET Heraclides of Pontus said that the earth turns daily on its axis "while the heavenly things were at rest..., considered the cosmos to be infinite..., [and] with the Pythagoreans, considered each planet to be a world with an earth-like body and with an atmosphere" (Dreyer 1906:123-125). He also suggested that Mercury and Venus have the sun at the center of their spheres. Pytheas navigated the British Isles and the northern seas and upon returning home wrote about an island that he called Thule or Ultima Thule. Pytheas explained the tides as caused by the moon. Aristotle, describes image projection in terms of the camera obscura. Apparently about this time the diving bell used for work under water. About 286 AET The first reference to the pyroelectric effect by Theophrastus who noted that tourmaline becomes charged when heated. 290 AET Birth of Aristarchus of Samos (lived 290-370 AET) About 300 AET Eukleides, better known as Euclid, published his Elements, a reorganized compilation of geometrical proofs including new proofs and a much earlier essay on the foundations of arithmetic. Elements conclude with the construction of Plato's five regular solids. Euclidean space has no natural edge, and is thus infinite. In his Optica, he noted that light travels in straight lines and described the law of reflection. Dicaiarch of Messina (250-310 AET), Greek geographer introduces the notion of latitude and longitude in map-making. About 310-340 AET Aristarchus of Samos, in On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, used trigonometry to estimate the size of the Moon and its distance by the Earth's shadow during a lunar eclipse. Inferred from observation that the Sun was much farther away than the Moon. Archimedes and others said that he maintained that the Moon revolved around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun which remained stationary like the stars. 313 AET Birth of Archimedes (Αρχιμήδης ο Συρακούσιος; 313-388 AET) 324 NET Birth of Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Ἐρατοσθένης ο Κυρηναίος; 324-405 AET) About 330 AET Greek inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria includes gearing in clepsydras About 340-350 AET Archimedes of Syracuse contributed numerous advances to science including the principle that a body immersed in fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid and the calculation of the value of pi. "His method was to select definite and limited problems. He then formulated hypotheses which he either regarded, in the Euclidean manner, as self-evident axioms or could verify by simple experiments. The consequences of these he then deduced and experimentally verified" (Crombie 1952:278)... About 355 AET Callimachus of Cyrene, a scholar and librarian at the Library of Alexandria, "created for the first time a catalog of Greek literature covering 120,000 books, called the Pinakes or Tables." About 360 AET Eratosthenes calculated the diameter of the earth by measuring noontime shadows at sites 800 km. apart. Assuming the earth is a sphere, the measured angle between the sites is seven degrees and the circumference is about 50 times 800 km., or about 40,000 km. About 370 AET Eratosthenes develops his sieve method for finding all prime numbers. About 375-390 AET Apollonius of Perga writes Conics. He introduced probably first the terms 'parabola' and 'hyperbola,' curves formed when a plane intersects a conic section, and 'ellipse,' a closed curve formed when a plane intersects a cone. Before 400 AET Astrolabes were in use for taking the angular distance between any two objects, usually the elevation in the sky of planets. In the early fifth century AET (i.e. the early 400s) Diocles, in On Burning Mirrors, proved the focal property of a parabola and showed how the Sun's rays can be made to reflect a point by rotating a parabolic mirror (Toomer 1978). About 466-473 AET Hipparchus of Rhodes (Ιππαρχος ο Ρόδιος; c.410-480 AET) measured the year with great accuracy and built the first comprehensive star chart with 850 stars and a luminosity, or brightness, scale. He is credited with the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, and [noted] that either of two geometrically constructed hypotheses could 'save the appearance' of the path that a planet follows: One shows the planets moving in eccentric circles and the other moving in epicycles carried by concentric circles (Duhem 1908:8). This timeline is adapted from http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/HistoricEvents.htm I cannot vouch for it's accuracy. Some details would need to be checked. Corrections are welcome if anyone has some to suggest. ========== Probably the best source for this whole development, especially the period 350-100 BCE (which would be Aegean years 250-500, through the time of Hipparchus in other words) is the book by Lucio Russo called The Forgotten Revolution. |
| Aug22-11, 01:25 AM | #44 |
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I just found the article on Anaximander at the IEP website. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
http://www.iep.utm.edu/anaximan/ I knew about this, but when I tried to read it earlier the site was down. This time it was up. I really like it. Good source! IEP has an article on Thales too. On scores of interesting people, in fact. At the top of every page there is an alphabet. Click on any letter and browse the names that begin with that letter. |
| Aug31-11, 12:17 PM | #45 |
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Thank you, Marcus, this thread is a treat!
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| Aug31-11, 01:20 PM | #46 |
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Rovelli's new book just came out! http://www.amazon.com/First-Scientis.../dp/1594161313 It already has one 5-star review, as I should know  Great book. Not only about a truly original scientific mind but also about the world of those independent coastal Ionian cities interconnected by sea (and in contact with older river-based civilizations.) |
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| Aug31-11, 03:23 PM | #47 |
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| Sep3-11, 09:38 AM | #48 |
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I found more online source material about the Antikythera mechanism:
http://www.antikythera-mechanism.gr/...t-so-important There is an FAQ maintained by "The Antikythera Mechanism Research Project". It gives the estimated date of construction as "150-100BC" which in my way of numbering the timeline of science starting from the time of Thales and Anaximander would be «450» to «500». Look back at post #43 for a sample timeline. (I decided simple angle quotes were a better way to distinguish the year-number---rather than tagging with some abbreviation like "AET". Or at least a convenient undistracting alternative. I noticed that the Anaximander book is selling in the Japanese market as well as more obvious English-speaking ones (Usa, UK,...) http://www.amazon.co.jp/First-Scient.../dp/1594161313 ベストセラー商品ランキング: 洋書 - 508,077位 (洋書のベストセラーを見る) 780位 ─ 洋書 > History > Ancient > Greece 1428位 ─ 洋書 > History > Europe > Greece 8197位 ─ 洋書 > Science > History & Philosophy It could be fun to try to figure this out. I think 洋書 means ENGLISH. So amazon Japan has a special category of English books and First Scientist is #508,077 just among the English books. I think 位 means "-th" so 508,077位 means 508,077-th And then you can see that its salesrank is 780-th among the English>History>Ancient>Greece books. It could be that they only HAVE 780 books in that category at Amazon.co.jp so Rovelli's book could be at the tail end of the line in Japan. But it is interesting they even stock it. They seem to have a lot of English titles at Amazon Japan and a pretty good selection by my standards. More kind of educated reader stuff. which makes sense because the people who want the cruder pops would be buying books in Japanese rather than English.[Edit: 10 hours later the rank hadn't changed much: 洋書 - 508,205位 ] |
| Sep3-11, 03:50 PM | #49 |
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The Antikythera Mechanism is extremely beautiful and wonderful. It was contructed on the island of Rhodes and looted by the Romans when they attacked and invaded the island. But their ship sank in a storm and they never got it back to Rome.
See these lovely YouTubes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eUibFQKJqI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqhuAnySPZ0 Additional information in this as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc&feature=fvst X-ray tomography was used to map the gear trains and it was only finally understood in 2008 what all the device calculated (moon phases, planet positions, probable eclipse years on a 63 year cycle, olympiads...) According to Wkpd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism Pindar the Greek poet 119±40 in his 7th Olympic ode (Epode 3) gave high praise to Rhodian craftsmanship ... But that was long before the Antikythera device was constructed. West of Crete is the island of Kythera where Venus is said to have arisen from the sea, and a small island next to Kythera is called Antikythera. The Roman loot ship sank there in a storm on its way back to Rome. |
| Sep5-11, 11:30 AM | #50 |
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http://www.libreriauniversitaria.it/.../9788861840751
Finally the Italian edition of Rovelli's book. I think Mondadori is Italy's largest publisher, so they may do an effective job of promotion. Get it reviewed in the media and so on. That could have some effect on the reception of the English version, I imagine. It looks like it's now available. "Usually ships in 5 to 6 working days." The title is different. I will give a rough translation of the publisher's description: What is science? Anaximander's revolution. "All human civiliizations have believed that the world consisted of Heaven above and Earth below. All but one. For the Greeks the Earth was a rock floating in space: beneath the Earth there was neither a supporting ground, nor turtles, nor the gigantic columns of which the Bible speaks. How did the Greeks come to realize that the Earth is suspended in emptiness? Who first grasped this, and how? The author gives us an account of Anaximander's extraordinary «scientific revolution», which Karl Popper has described as «one of the boldest, most revolutionary, and most important ideas in the entire history of human thought.» And an account of the conflict this opened up, which is still burning. Also of the nature of scientific thought, of its ability to criticize and rebel, of the force with which it subverts the order of things and our image of the world. And an account as well of how scientific knowledge can be, at the same time, extremely effective and «wrong», as the example of XX Century physics shows. To discuss Anaximander is to reflect on the meaning of the scientific revolution that began with Einstein." Here is the Italian original: Che cos'è la scienza? La rivoluzione di Anassimandro di Rovelli Carlo Tutte le civiltà umane hanno sempre pensato che il mondo fosse fatto di Cielo sopra e Terra sotto. Tutte, eccetto una. Per i Greci la Terra era un sasso che galleggia nello spazio; sotto la Terra non c'era altra terra, né tartarughe, né le gigantesche colonne di cui parla la Bibbia. Come hanno fatto i Greci a comprendere che la Terra è sospesa nel nulla? Chi lo ha capito e come? È di questa straordinaria «rivoluzione scientifica» di Anassimandro che l'autore ci parla, e che Karl Popper ha definito «una delle idee più audaci, rivoluzionarie e portentose dell'intera storia del pensiero umano". E del conflitto che ha aperto, che ancora brucia. E della natura del pensiero scientifico, della sua capacità critica e ribelle, della forza con cui sovverte l'ordine delle cose e la nostra immagine del mondo; di un sapere scientifico estremamente efficace e «sbagliato» al tempo stesso, come ci insegna la fisica del xx secolo. Parlare di Anassimandro è riflettere su cosa significhi la rivoluzione scientifica aperta da Einstein. I found some more detail here, a kind of newsletter on the media dated end July: http://www.italiannetwork.it/news.aspx?id=29101 I was puzzled by not being able to find a picture of the COVER of the Italian edition ========================= If anyone is new to the discussion, the English version of the book is here: http://www.amazon.com/First-Scientis...dp/1594161313/ |
| Sep6-11, 04:13 PM | #51 |
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I put the Table of Contents in a compact form so it gives a kind of outline of the book in a glance. You can see how the book is divided about evenly between a revealing spotlight on the past and reflections on its significance for the present.
http://www.amazon.com/First-Scientis.../dp/1594161313 ==The First Scientist TOC== Introduction xi 1.The Sixth Century 1 Knowledge and Astronomy 4/ The Gods 15/ Miletus 18 2.Anaximander’s Contributions 29 3.Atmospheric Phenomena 37 Cosmological and Biological Naturalism 42 4.Earth Floats in SpaceSuspended in the Void 45 5.Invisible Entities and Natural Laws 61 Thales: Water 62/ Anaximenes: Compressing and Rarefying 64/ Anaximander: Apeiron 65/ The Idea of Natural Law: Anaximander, Pythagoras, and Plato 70 6.Rebellion Becomes Virtue 75 7.Writing, Democracy, and Cultural Crossbreeding 83 The Greek Alphabet 87 Science and Democracy 93 Cultural Crossbreeding 97 8.What Is Science? 103 The Crumbling of Nineteenth-Century Illusions 104/ Science Cannot be Reduced to Verifiable Predictions 107/ Exploring Forms of Thought About the World 111/ The Evolving Worldview 114/ The Rules of the Game and Commensurability 120/ Why is Science Reliable? 123/ In Praise of Uncertainty 125 9.Between Cultural Relativism and Absolute Thought 131 10.Can We Understand the World Without Gods? 143 The Conflict 147 11.Prescientific Thought 157 The Nature of Mythical-Religious Thought 159 The Different Functions of the Divine 170 Conclusion 179 Notes 183/Bibliography 191/Index 199/Illustration Credit 210/Acknowledgments 211 |
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