Steve

“Anaximander’s reverence for Thales is manifest, and it is clear that Anaximander leans heavily upon Thales’s intellectual accomplishments. Still, he does not hesitate to say that Thales is mistaken about this or that matter, or that it is possible to do better.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

“The opening lines of Genesis, in the literal translation by E. A. Speiser, read: When God set about to create heaven and earth—the world being then a formless waste, with darkness over the seas and only an awesome wind sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light.[42] Notice that before the creation of light, the seas were already there.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

“But the way he interprets the role of water is distinctively nonmythical and nonreligious. Thales’s water is normal water. Thales’s ocean is not a god.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science

“Anaximander was the first to pursue this third way. He was the first thinker able to conceive and put into practice what is now the fundamental methodological credo of modern scientists:”
― Carlo Rovelli, Anaximander: And the Birth of Science