Most of the ideas of Anaximander (second from right) have come to us through the writing of Aristotle Ella_Ca/shutterstock
Carlo Rovelli (translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg)
(Allen Lane)
ASTRONOMY was conducted at Chinese government institutions for more than 20 centuries before Jesuit missionaries turned up and, somewhat bemused, pointed out that Earth is round. Why, after so much close observation and meticulous record-keeping, did 17th-century Chinese astronomers still think Earth was flat?
Theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli addresses this in Anaximander and the Nature of Science, his first book, released in French in…
