Summary of Carlo Rovelli's Reality Is Not What It Seems

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 In the year 450 BCE, a man embarked on a ship traveling from Miletus to Abdera. It was to be a crucial journey for the history of knowledge.

#2 The Milesians, a group of thinkers who lived in Miletus, Turkey, in the sixth century before our era, revolutionized the way questions were asked about the world and the way answers were sought. They realized that by shrewdly using observation and reason, rather than searching for answers in fantasy, they could discover new aspects of reality.

#3 The city of Miletus was the birthplace of the natural sciences and philosophy. It was there that the first parliament in the history of the world met, and where men decided collectively their own laws.

#4 The Milesians had understood that the world can be comprehended using reason. They had become convinced that the variety of natural phenomena must be attributable to something simple, and had tried to understand what this something might be. They conceived of a kind of elementary substance from which everything was made.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669389644

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Insights on Carlo Rovelli's Reality Is Not What It Seems

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the year 450 BCE, a man embarked on a ship traveling from Miletus to Abdera. It was to be a crucial journey for the history of knowledge.

#2

The Milesians, a group of thinkers who lived in Miletus, Turkey, in the sixth century before our era, revolutionized the way questions were asked about the world and the way answers were sought. They realized that by shrewdly using observation and reason, rather than searching for answers in fantasy, they could discover new aspects of reality.

#3

The city of Miletus was the birthplace of the natural sciences and philosophy. It was there that the first parliament in the history of the world met, and where men decided collectively their own laws.

#4

The Milesians had understood that the world can be comprehended using reason. They had become convinced that the variety of natural phenomena must be attributable to something simple, and had tried to understand what this something might be. They conceived of a kind of elementary substance from which everything was made.

#5

Democritus’s system is extremely simple: the entire universe is made up of a boundless space in which innumerable atoms move. Atoms have no qualities at all, apart from their shape. They have no weight, no colour, no taste. Everything else is a by-product, random and accidental, of this movement and this combining of atoms.

#6

Plato and Aristotle were familiar with Democritus’s ideas, and they fought against them. They did so on behalf of other ideas, some of which were later to create obstacles