Critical thinker

In questioning the wisdom of his forebears, a Greek philosopher laid the foundations for the modern scientific method.

- DANYL MCLAUCHLAN

ANAXIMANDER AND THE NATURE OF SCIENCE, by Carlo Rovelli (Allen Lane, $40)

Most scientists know what science is until someone asks them to define it, and then they don't. It's something to do with precision and accuracy, so you'd think there was a precise and accurate definition, but there isn't. We know it's related to truth and reality, two big, solid-seeming concepts that blur and dissolve when we examine them too closely.

Conservative historians of science believe it's a formal system of knowledge-seeking invented by a clique of British gentlemen-philosophers in the 17th century. More expansive thinkers argue that the use of inductive logic and empirical reasoning date back to our earliest prehistory - that humans are an innately scientific species.

The Italian theoretical physicist and bestselling science writer Carlo Rovelli believes that science is a philosophy: a cluster of associated ideas, all of which are deeply counterintuitive, which aggregated together over thousands of years. To Rovelli, science develops in specific cultures - ones that value intellectual curiosity, debate and uncertainty.

In this sharp little book - part history, part pro-science polemic - he traces both the philosophy and the culture of science back to Miletus, a Greek city-state on the coast of Ionia in modern-day Turkey, and a philosopher named Anaximander, who lived there around 600 BC.