To Explain the World review – a dry study of history’s greatest scientists
"I confess that I find Aristotle frequently tedious, in a way that Plato is not," writes Steven Weinberg, "but although often wrong Aristotle is not silly, in the way that Plato sometimes is."
It's a school report to make the philosophers blush, but with his latest book, To Explain the World, Weinberg makes it clear he isn't out to polish anyone's pedestal. No, he has turned to the notes and theories from classical Greece to reveal how far our understanding, and investigative techniques, progressed between antiquity and the age of enlightenment. For, as Weinberg argues, while Aristotle prized theories based on mental rumination alone, it was the emergence of the scientific method, rooted in physical experimentation, that has allowed us to discover, explain and harness the laws of nature.
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