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 knowledgeseeking invented by a clique of British gentlemen-philosophers in the 17th century. More expansive thinkers