 Good evening. Very warm welcome to the British Library this evening. My name is John. I look after the events program here at the British Library. It's our absolute pleasure to welcome back to the Library Carlo Rovelli and tonight he'll be in conversation with Tom Whipple who is a science editor at The Times. So thank you very much for being here and thanks to those who are watching online and those of you in the future sometime who are watching the film of this event. Nice to see you too. So tonight obviously we're going to be talking about Carlo's newly published Anna Maxander and the Nature of Science which I believe is not new to Carlo but it's new to you in English so it's exciting exciting journey of discovery for this incredible thinker which was new to me and I'm sure you'll be finding out things probably that you didn't know this evening as well. Here at the library we have everything under the sun from all generations all eras all cultures and languages. We've just finished an exhibition on Alexander the Great which maybe some of you have seen but Alexander was way after Anna Maxander. He received 300 years or more later so you know positively an heir to the great thinking that went before. So tonight yes obviously we were with Tom Whipple. Unfortunately Sarah Perry had to pull out a few days ago through ill health but she was very disappointed not to be here and I believe she's watching online too so kind of in the room. The event will take the normal format it'll be about an hour of conversation then it'll be a chance to ask your questions. Those of you watching online can post a question in the form below the video and we'll get to some of those and we'll read some of those out later and then after that we have a number of Carlo's books including the new one Anna Maxander which will be on sale down by the shop and Carlo will be stopping to sign copies. That is it from me please enjoy the event and over to Tom and Carlo. Thank you very much for coming and apologies for not being Sarah Perry. It's lovely to see you all here. So Carlo Rivelli is an Italian theoretical physicist. He is most famous I think amongst physicists for his work on quantum loop gravity which is about uniting finding a way this sort of great holy grail way of uniting general relativity with a standard model of particle physics. It's not normally a topic we get so many people for we're waiting for the blackboard so we can get going on equations. No it's it's 7 p.m. and it's a Tuesday and we're not here to talk about quantum loop gravity. We are here to talk about an ax Amanda and the book that Carlo has written about him. Carlo is far more famous amongst non-physicists for his science writing in particular in the UK his book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics which was that unusual I think probably hitherto unseen publishing phenomenon a stocking filler about theoretical physics which did extremely well in I think 2015 but before he wrote that book in Italian he wrote his book about an ax Amanda who I think is probably one of the greatest philosophers that most of us I mean I'm talking to myself hadn't really ever heard of and now it's been translated and he's here to tell us in his own words about his way I think you're a little bit in love with an ax Amanda or you were when you built wrote it a man who you wrote in his excellent book changes the very grammar of our understanding of the universe before I give this talk the last book talk I chaired I forgot to say at the end books are available to buy at the back and that's probably my only job here so I will say it at the beginning and I will say it at the end as well books are available to buy at the back please do buy one but let's get straight on to it and who is an ax Amanda well first of all thank you very much Tom for doing very grateful and thank you all of you for being here is a pleasure and British Library's place is really a place for person like me want to be who is an ax Amanda for me it was a surprise I'm sure I'm sure it's it's little known or not known at all by the majority of people for me was surprised was a big surprise I stumbled upon him by chance because I was teaching at some point I decided to teach a class the university a course on the history of ancient science and so I got I was always been interested in history of science so I was teaching a class and I was learning about ancient astronomy and Ptolemy he park was how do we figure out that how big is yours and all these kind of things and then I was asking the people who did that where did they get their ideas and so in studying I was going backward and backward and back and somebody realized that that all the pointers in antiquity toward the source of practically all the ideas out of which ancient science came out we're pointing toward this guy and I an ax Amanda I got curious and I knew about Ximander because I'd studied in high school in Italy we in Italy we follow class the history of philosophy everybody does a little bit of philosophy in the beginning there's always the first page of the book in which says history so philosophy is born in Greece which is questionable but philosophy born in Greece and in fact it was born through three guys one is talus one is an ax Amanda one is an ax menace and talus talk that everything is made of water and an ax Amanda talk that everything is made by a pair on which nobody knows what it is in Italian a pair on so sounds like a cocktail a pearl and the third one is an ax menace talk that everything is made of air turn of the page next one socrates or whatever it made no sense whatsoever right this is just empty I mean how come philosophy come out from three people saying three silly things so that's anything I knew but then I discovered that all these ideas about your naturalistic understanding about the world about the cosmos about how things happens we're pointing to him so I got curious and more curious and I started to read everything that they could find about this guy which is not much because it's not a and there are a few books about him there are some scholars who studied him and tried to reconstruct what was in his book through the ancient authors referring to him and I made a list of what presumably was in his book according to this reconstruction and then it was I was deeply struck as a way to moment this is a major jump in human thinking there is a breaking here rupture like the French say there's something a way of a human way of thinking that we see up to that point in a totally different one from that point and then this was my law for an Aximander that exploded there's a chap and that was 600 years later was it yeah that's somebody six hundred later imagining how an Aximander could which is still a long time ago so talk us through before we get on to the list of things that that we believe an Aximander believed and that he thought about set the scene so where is he when is he what was his in so far as we can say anything what was his life like what was the society like that he was born into and what sort of things did it believe and do yeah so this is a sixth century before our era so this means a cent and a half of two before classic Greece before almost everybody you can think about the Greek civilization was everybody except Homer and is he orders his parents in English is the others has your couple of authors that are before him who tell stories about about the gods or about Troy and it's before Athens became powerful before Sparta became powerful he lived in Miletus is a city on the cost of what's today Greece he's a minor so this is this is modern-day Turkey but at the time it was Greece civilization why at the time it was yeah the city of Miletus actually very ancient goes back to the millennium earlier but it was colonized by the it was destroyed various times where various people was colonized by the Greek a few centuries before maybe two or three centuries before so it was a mostly Greek population which got in mixed with local population Greeks had in the couple of centuries before had expanded in what is southern Italy today southern France black sea so the world is called Greek colonies everywhere but Miletus was particularly successful as a city because it had its own colonies and it was a sort of a center for little empire he had maybe 20 30 colonists all over the Mediterranean was trading with all of this was trading with Egypt trading with a Mesopotamia and was rich was probably perhaps the richest city in this strange constellation which was Greek the Greek civilization which never got united in a kingdom or a state it was a was fractured it was well doing well commercial and had gone through this typical process of political rapid evolution that many Greek cities and also Cartagena so Rome few centuries later went through namely Kings being taken down by the aristocracy and then democracy and then political parties and then a complex political rediscretion of how to arrange the social life of the city which happened in many in many parts of Greece which had not happened in the older kingdoms and empires which existed since millennia right Egypt was 3000 years older at the time or the in the in the Mesopotamia area there was Babylonia there were it's life of the next one is shortly after the fall of the of Nineveh and the Assyrian Empire because the Persian were already coming down and so after the life of the Ximander the Persian Empire would conquer completely the Mesopotamia would destroy Miletus basically killed inhabitants of Miletus or take them slaves so I think Miletus was a I can imagine a city with a lot of commerce a lot of ideas coming from all over because we're in contact with with all all over very alive and characteristically and maybe that's important for understanding why what happened happened in touch with a knowledge with ancient knowledge mathematics astronomy writing and everything of the ancient civilization Egypt Babylonia but without outside from the rigid power structures of the Empire himself we know very little an Ximander we know that he was a most likely an important person part of the aristocracy there some auto says that he was a head of a colony at some point he probably travels lot maybe he went to Babylonia maybe went to Egypt we don't know because all a lot of people talk about him in ancient but these are people who talk about him same to his later so it's stories of stories stories so this is a report of a trip of him in Sparta for instance where he's said to build a sundial with which Sparta was keeping time and also a report of him predicting a earthquake which doesn't make any sense probably I mean unless there was some knowledge we don't know but I consider absolutely unlikely that this is the case that's sort of the did he have a job I mean was was this the sort of place where they paid people to think and be philosophers or was he you know do we get the idea is independently wealthy or which presumably tells you something about the state itself the Greek cities had a structure with slaves with peasants with a class of people working in the city like artisans and things like that and with an upper class which was mostly on running the political business taking arms when needed and also running all the commerce and so it was a strata stratified society he clearly was part of the upper strata society he's said to run a colony which means he had a political role at some point somewhere people talk about the school of Miletus Thales was older than him now I spent some time I'm not a historian I spent some time reading I think I could try to figure out what it means at school at that point the aristocracy I mean the aristocracy a big chunk of the society knew how to read and write and was probably very the first moment in for humankind where you had a big chunk of society that knew how to read and write because the writings was much older of course writing goes back to a three millennia before but up to that point was mostly in the hands of specialites the people scribes that would work for the power and with the guy who knew how to write so the ruler would have somebody working for them and writing all people in commerce that would use writing as a tool for administration and things so writing as a basic education of a large part of the population just happened a few decades ago I mean less than 500 years ago since then which means that somebody should have talked the kids how to read and write so certainly there were tutors or sort of schools now we know very well how this worked a century later or two centuries later in Athens we know about the schools of Aristotle we don't know what was in Miletus presumably there was a school where a place where you go and learn and the kids of the of the upper class get an education and like it was the academy or the listen in in Athens the well-known period I mean this is funny because there are periods of history in which we have all sort of information about right we know we know what happened in Athens every day in the 5th century day by after day we were or in Rome at the time of Caesar we can say where these people were every day for and a long period in which we don't know anything so we know very little about that period but the way I imagine is that there was a place where people could discuss what we would call today cultural issues questions about everything because the book that he wrote it's a sort of summa about everything how nature works how history works how biology works how the sky works and how the history of the you of the universe went so this was discussed so well this is so I think we tease long enough so tell us what why we're here so we've got the background why do we care about next Amanda what was this book and what was his theories yes so let's get to the core of the matter now what was in this book a lot that's first point and if I had to summarize and almost some astonishing ideas to which I want to come in a moment but before that I just said that presumably the book was an account of knowledge about the world and that was not new at all because with many books of antiquity which are accounts of the knowledge about the world and the way they usually work is as follow or it all started with a big God the blah blah blah who fought with his other big God blah blah blah and made love with other goddess blah blah and what came out is the earth and then they fought and then they killed their father and then they and that's the story okay and then out of that our king come out and we must be reverent to the king and that's it okay and why the rain comes down because Jupiter or Zeus sent the rain why the wind blows because the king the God of the of the wind blows why there is a storm and what to do about the storm of the sea where this Poseidon and so in other words up to that point everything we have and we have a lot in writing about the world it's a story about how the gods determine the fact of nature and then we have this book which first of all unlikely everything else on the topic is not written in poetry but is written in prose so an expanded is literally the the guy who invented the prose which Molière made fun about that but he invented the writing in prose and the entire book it's an account of the fact of the world where the gods play no role at all and all phenomena are there's an attempt to explain all phenomena in terms of matter of phenomena for instance this is one of my preferred one come straight from there where does the water but does rain come from but does the water of the rain come from what comes from the evaporation of the water on the ground which goes up evaporate and then condensate again comes down okay who understood that an Aximander it's in his book and and that's what we learn at primary school of the cycle of the water and now we know where the rain come from but they don't tell us that was an Aximander that found it so he has naturalistic explanation about about the fact of the world and a lot of this some are completely wrong as one can imagine but a lot of remarkably good and a lot of attempts of throw ideas how could the work works they're surprising for instance he talks about change of climate through the time and the fact that living species change according to the climate so they probably change through times ask where humankind could come from and it says it would could not be just by itself because babies are not self-sufficient so it's impossible to think that just a baby came out so it should be some other species that predated the humans and then he goes through some argument and says that presumably life come from water from the ocean and then evolved when when the earth dried up enough so that they could work up storage in truly the thing he has a he does a story of the beginning of the universe which is obviously nothing to do with like modern science cosmology but it looks like modern science cosmology and it begin it was a big explosion and there's a sort of crust of fire that break up in pieces totally another language than the story of the gods so it's a moment in which him or his school or his culture I don't know exactly how it happened came out with idea of thinking about nature in terms which is open up the naturalistic questions that slowly evolved into what called scientific approach to the world and then there's an idea the main idea the main idea is what Popper called the most portentous ideas that human kind ever had which is what made me fall in love with him which is the following earth floats in the nothing sort of linger in the over the abyss without falling earth is not the ground which is below the sky but it's like a big stone that floats with the sky all around and how the hell somebody could guess that and understand that or get reasonably to think that I find it's magic and the beginning you said my work is quantum gravity this is nothing to do with quantum gravity it's not true this has to do with quantum gravity because to do quantum gravity means try to think the world differently to do the kind of step think about space differently because of quantum mechanics time different because of quantum mechanics so change the way we think about the world in the kind of ways that Einstein did or far the Newton did or Copernicus did to understand the world better more in large we have to change something deep about and he was in a world where it was obvious that up is there and down is there and hence something has to hold up the world exactly so that was what people thought at his time but not just in in Miletus that is what people were thinking in Egypt in Babylonia that was what people think in China in India in Africa in the ancient American Maya we're thinking that in fact everybody else through the planet conceived the cosmos as the earth down and the sky up okay and then this guy comes and says no no no you all got it wrong and can you imagine I mean this is in the square of Miletus one at some moment I don't know how old was he when he said he goes to the square and talk to his fellow citizens you know what your father your grandfather everybody through the through the world forked think this way but you're wrong you're wrong I got it right the earth is just a stone and the sky continues all around it and I will fit how much courage does it take to do that not at the end of a long process of science but the beginning first time that this happened and how did how could he do that okay this is how I opened the book in fact this by telling this but then one thing I try to do to the book is try to reconstruct what could have been the process for him to get this that's my own reconstruction of course we don't know but if you think from now I think the interesting story it goes back and forth in the following way how do we know that there's nothing below us on the one hand come on it's pretty obvious because we see the the sky turning around us you just go out in the summer day you can even do it in England you don't need to be in Greece or in Turkey sometimes you do see the sky and sometimes it's warm okay and and and and you see the star going around right and if you look north you see the sky during the night moving and the Sun goes down and then the Sun really appear the other side and the moon goes down and the other side how do how do they go through if there is earth all the way down there's a problem unless there are always new stars a new sun every time every day is a new sun or a new moon so it's very tempting to think it's the same Sun is the same stars and they just pass through but if they have to pass through there should be nothing should be open so if this open it means that there's nothing below the earth so it's very simple okay but this is point if it's very simple why nobody in China got it they're not stupid the Chinese right why nobody in America got it why nobody in Egypt got it they did there's a huge amount of civilization that developed humans are intelligent and do things and nobody got it why because of what you said at beginning at some point you said well up it up down is down and heavy things fall down so if there was nothing under the earth what yours would fall so I can imagine this conversation through centuries and civilizations happening so many time you know two smart people looking at the sun going down and one say the morning come up how does it go through and one of the two saying well must be nothing and maybe it's the other was it would fall it's impossible and then come an X Amanda and say wait a minute why should fall maybe we are wrong in extrapolating the fact that objects fall to the earth itself maybe we're taking something it's our habit of thinking and making it universal when it's not universal okay maybe we are wrong in taking our experience and think that everything is like our experience so maybe if we were the other side of the earth some things will fall up this side of the earth thing will fall this way okay they will fall this way and he was smart enough to convince people around him in fact it's it's remarkable because he got this idea he convinced the people around him he convinced the the thinkers that follow him and Xagoras and pedocrats socrates plateau plateau rights I'm not sure but I think is reasonable of the earth is just a sphere of stone and things fall so it convinced all the all the cultural people in Greece and then Alexander the Great conquered all the area going from India and so cultural people means everybody and so the Indians got to know about that from the Greek and the Chinese got convinced only when centuries later the European went there the Chinese were still thinking that the sky is just above the earth a millennia later and in the Americas people change the mind only when they got so so it for the rest of the planet it took somebody to go and tell the story before coming out from the wrong idea that up and down at Universal but now to to be able to get out of the idea that up and down are the way they obviously are it took the courage of somebody who you know has the courage to say what we all have been think thinking since generations is wrong and I have an idea it could be better I stand it that Newton did that Copernicus did that I mean but now is easier because somebody else has done it my I'm paid for you know Carlo you should get money a salary but you should try to do something like that me and my colleagues him and everybody because no it's possible but he not only did this is the first cosmological evolution but he realized that it's possible to do that you realize it's possible to do he or his school or his I don't know how it happened so I think that it this is a major step in the development of human thinking because it's a first cosmological evolution change the image of the cosmos and because even more it's the opening of the realization that by changing the image of the cosmos you can learn more you can jump out of your story and get another story that works better so was this was this the you talked about your Italian school books was this the start of science was this the first page and if so what is science my book it's mostly about this question so somehow an x-mangra is it prompted me to ask exactly this question and the first time was published by an obscure publisher in the US who sold 25 copies the title was a first scientist and some reviewer who actually did not read the book comments oh come on this is stupid why should you say that is the first scientist he didn't have mathematics even what I'm trying to say the notion of first scientists is obviously extremely vague because science is not a yes and no thing what we call modern science is a complex institution and body of knowledge and set of technologies and tools which develop very slowly through the centuries and a lot of things which we call today science was obviously not in an x-mangra it's no mathematics there's no measurement there's no testing theories there's no experimentation and the list could be long but but to know what exactly is the core of doing science is not easy and it's not obvious and through the centuries not only our idea of how the work the world works changes but also our idea of what is this to do science changes Newton had a different the Maxwell a Maxwell had a different idea than Einstein about what it is to do science and the philosopher kept discussing that and and I think we we understand better and better like we understand the world better and better we also understand better and better what is it that we're doing in doing science they didn't doing science changes isn't only with and I think that the philosophy of science of the 19th century that says science is discovering the truth about the world this is true and we've got this is true ever got a list of certainty it just has not that picture of science has not held even the develop the historical development of science itself because there's a sense that Newton is wrong right it's all over his greatness mercury doesn't follow the Newton equation so new decrease the wrong factually wrong so it should be both more subtle than this side so there was a retreat as those especially with relativity quantum mechanics trying to say well science is nothing else than hiding a question and making predictions very fine theory falsifying theory I think that this misses something core in the scientific enterprise so for me reflecting about what an x-mander did it's also reflecting on what is it to understand better understand the world there's no doubt that my opinion that an x-mander understood something more about the world and Copernicus understood something more about the world and and and and and so did and so did Newton and Maxwell etc. or Darwin what did these people do I think that essentially the core the strength is they did what an x-mander did namely found a different manners of thinking about reality which works better and to do that you have to take things that you give for granted and throw them out of the you're thinking so it's up and down a universal no it's not and now you understand better and you know three millennia later Einstein said this simultaneity universal no just throw that away and you understand the world better it's exactly the same step okay Newton gave us a fantastic picture about the world in which the world is a is a uniform space with little stones that pull and push with forces and then comes farther than Maxwell say no no forget about that think about fields selective field magnetic fields completely different picture works better and every time we have a stronger richer conceptual framework we change perspective about reality and we get a better one and we don't need to think is definitive in fact after changing so many times we presumably think we're not again of the story obviously but if that's a core aspect of science that goes back to that revolution that happened in Miletus 26th century ago and then of course mathematics was a huge improvement to experimentation was a huge improvement to verification is a huge improvement to instrument microscope again these are tools that added to this main activity which is change the grammar with when we understand the world up and down means different thing after enough before you make the case that you talk in the book there's an ax man himself rejected the teachings of his master while respecting the teachings of his master and that's that that's how you view Newton presumably yeah you don't think this and you use a comparison to the Chinese court you don't consider this to be just an inevitable part of being human you could imagine a world of history where I think it wouldn't have that yeah because well I think I write in the book is that if you look at ancient time is full of school of thought which are in a fight against one another or tribes fight and and civilization fighting one another and the right in the book and think of the Bible the Bible the way talks about the knowledge of Babylonia it's very very critical it's it's demons so critics is there sure antiquity us is there following a master the also visitation at masters and followers Jesus Menchus or whatever or Pythagore I had it's a it's it's followers I actually might have had a master which is always all his master in antiquity which is Thales Thales was considered one of the great wise people of ancient Greece and it's no doubt that an expander follows Thales because in Thales there is already this attempt to understand everything in terms of natural phenomenon a lot of the ideas that I'm saying are from an expander actually from Thales but very open and very critically there are ideas which are different between the two and the ancients say Thales thought that but an expander disagreed and in fact there is a passage in Cicero kicker on how you say the Roman this word Cicero yeah in which he says um Thales think that the complexity of all the things it's a single substance which is water and strangely an expander that is in companion and and friend disagrees how is possible their friend how could they disagree right is this master how can you disagree with this master okay so what is it six century later still strange that you don't agree with your master and that's the methodological turning of the page right so between following the master and taking everything down and trying something else there's the third way and the third way is to build on the knowledge that you receive but be able to challenge it nevertheless and change something and sadly this is what opened the key of the development this is why it's the beginning of philosophy beginning of science because the Anaximenes does the same with him and and at Sagoras then the same with them and and then socrates and criticize them and then plato this follow up with plato force doesn't criticize socrates but changes and pretend socrates to say something certain and say and Aristotle criticize plato and then start this thing in which you build on the quiet knowledge being aware that something can be changed there and that's how we got all the knowledge the way we have the building of the past but being ready to is this sort of Newton standing on the shoals of Giants is he the first giant is he or his talas sorry is he the first giant on which everyone else made this tottering inverted pyramid of no because I think that the what the people of the the school of millet did obviously even if it's hard for us to recognize the connections had big influence from the knowledge in Babylonia from the knowledge in Egypt these are people traveled and and and learn thing one thing that the the ancient auto attribute to Talisman or Anaximander is an invention of a gnomon the gnomon is the Sun dial essentially this is this wave measuring this the Sun by a stick and you can do a lot of astronomy basic astronomy with that which actually existed before in Egypt and in Babylonia the long attention to the movement of the stars which clearly it's nourish all that so they built they certainly built on previous knowledge I think it's a long dialogue that that grows but this so critical master pupil relation Talis Anaximander I think it has become the the the blueprint of all universities today right you I am a university teacher what I really want is one of my student try the paper saying color of it is wrong because because because look I can do better and do you sort of think that so pulling out of it you talk about Cicero and what he said about Anaximander I think it's worth explaining how we know anything about Anaximander at all because to all intents and purposes we have nothing that he wrote we have nothing that he wrote on which doesn't prevent us to talk about people ideas right we talk about Jesus ideas or Buddha's idea about an extended the great ideas we don't have nothing written by them but all everybody wrote about them so we have other people wrote about them so there's a lot written in ancient text about Anaximander well this is a lot there is a lot of reference to Anaximander Aristotle very number of reference Anaximander says that Anaximander think that now this references you can find them all through autos of antiquity which span many centuries somewhere in country contradictory with one another so it's far from obvious how to do how to put the puzzle together and how to reconstruct from secondary sources his own thinking and that's not my job I because I'm not I'm not a historian I my I studied Greek at school when I was a kid but I can't read Greek now ancient Greek now at all so you need you need to be a professional that and on that I relied on the people and in the book I refer to five or six people who spend their life trying to do this reconstruction so basically have autos that go from couple of centuries after him all the way to you know late antiquity or Byzantium a thousand years later and you say well this knew that this knew that this knew that Aristotle most likely in his library had a book by Anaximander because because it was a sort of library had basically everything that was available about this and makes a lot of reference to him Teofrastas who wrote the history of philosophy certainly had the book except that we don't have to twice the first was either so we have those who quote a lot of teofrastas so and we have several which quote them in different manners so you see which one is more reliable so there's certainly a large body of uncertainty and I took what people attribute to him on which there is no certainty and sort of took away what there are some people who just say well this is for sure what is there and some people working with much more I chose a middle way and what I did is that's my contribution all these people who reconstruct is thinking don't understand sides because that's not the job they're historians they're historians of philosophy they're great greasest I don't know people studying Greek civilization with language and processes classes is thank you and we live in this silly intellectual world in which those who studied the classics ignore the basis of what science is I wouldn't be able to read the Newton equation and those who are capable of understanding what Copernicus and Newton did have no interest in ancient history so because of this reciprocal incapacity of listening to one another of which is typical of a culture between the humanities and science they're obvious blind spot and Aleximandre is is prototypical example in my opinion there are others the books written about that Lutheran writer who wrote a lot about that if you modern science is rooted in many things but one of the big roots in this is this ancient site and astronomy and and and this line of ideas the market is at ancient atomists and so on so forth but there are very few people who can follow understand something about the the culture of that period and of science to be able to see the the obvious route and and how one come from the legacy of the other so I found myself it's like finding a jewel right I mean come on nobody's seen this but it's obvious once you look at this is all it seems to me it's obvious when you look at the next in Mandel from the ice of a scientist that like Papa did I'm not the first one jump up and say wow I mean this is a genius have you ever fancied about meeting him and how it would go and what you would say yes look at the guy wouldn't you like to meet the guy like this is a quintessential of the you know the smart grandfather who was so deeply about you okay but my fantasies will always I would meet him and be completely disappointed because of course it's a completely different imagination maybe you know a guy full of himself who thought of having well this is what I worry because you've got him from these fragmentary glances and you could imagine you could get Newton from fragmentary glances not realize he's sort of a malevolent weirdo I mean is what would you like do you think he would understand quantum loop gravity do you think you could take him through in an afternoon no obviously not obviously not and it seems it's a single step in what we learn about the world it's slow it took long time to for humankind to acquire it and things which are seem obvious to us took long time to digest right and then once they digested they just become part of our common knowledge it doesn't mean that you just say them people I mean school is long complicated even for us which already is so I don't Galileo has all this talk about if Aristotle was here and I could talk with him Galileo constantly clearly is in dialogue with Aristotle in his mind okay Aristotle would say that I sort of would not say that and Aristotle we have these texts it was his books it was all writing as much easier now you're suggesting could we get it all this wrong of course we couldn't get it wrong but what seems to me interesting is not whether him himself whether it was a guy and X Amanda who we don't even know if this idea sort of tribute to him are actually him or maybe but from my perspective I'm not an historian I don't care about what happened I care about ideas and those idea appeared those ideas did we're not there before and where they're after so in a sense what is of interest to me is the ideas whether it was him or his brother a collection of people who cares what's fantastic is that the humankind got this and and and the concatenation of course we probably get many connection wrong because we always have a fragmented view of the past but the concatenation the how things influence one another it's strongly there and I think understanding how we got understood what we think we understand it's important to have a perspective on our knowledge our knowledge is not obvious as sometimes we think is not given as sometimes we think and it's just a step in a in a process tomorrow it will be ridiculous some of things we think today like now is ridiculous some of think Galileo thought and do you think that from the moment that knowledge appeared it was inevitable that we could have this sort of golden thread could have stayed till today you me I'm talking because you talk in the book you talk a lot about August Augustine and what Augustine thought of Anaximander and you also talk about the extent to which Anaximander came up with a world that wasn't based on theology that wasn't based on these gods and but then you got Augustine a very clever man who spent a lot of time thinking about angels on pinheads could you have seen this flourishing not persisting yeah I think we came very close to lose completely the that with with with the full with expansion the Roman Empire and then the Christianization the Roman by a lot of that particular ancient scientific thing King was lost and I think that is absolutely nothing guaranteeing a constant grow or a line of development I think the history is very random and whatever value system you used to for evaluating it where is intellectual understanding or moral or whatever it's just a going up and forth things get lost things get and but I do think that in spite of all that there's a cumulative aspect of knowledge which is underrated by modern philosophy of science I mean this I think the idea that science the idea of Kuhn and Popper that science works by just you know theories that work and that they don't work is throw away you find another one it's completely wrong and we did we do know things more that we did in the past I think that's undeniable the earth is not a flat thing earth forever and and and and sky just above the earth is really a floating rock in the in the middle so that was a step ahead and then understanding is round was a step ahead understanding that rotates goes around the stand was a step ahead and so on its force when Darwin understood what you do did this a step ahead that's it we've learned it so I think that's a there's a balance once again that the 19th century idea that you know there's this March toward fools is bullshit but some contemporary idea that it's always relative perspective and there's no no cumulative aspect of knowledge is also not giving a good account of what is going on great well I could keep on asking questions but I think we should probably go to you guys we've got about half an hour before you all head off to buy Carlos book so I don't actually know if there is there is a microphone I'm traumatized David Spiegelhalter as I did this whole thing and just forgot to mention and he was in staring daggers at me and then I had to stand up as people were exiting and sort of shout and say by the book so by the book but I'm not shouting do with yes we have a question at the back there we'll start the lady in the purple jumper thank you for your talk I have a question not about the book but about your writing process and particularly about writing in Italian versus English so I myself am Austrian and I write in German but I find that my English writing is very different from writing in German and I was just curious to hear about how when you choose to write in Italian versus in English yes I'm well aware of what you're talking about the the way you write in different languages and English Austrian or English or Italian it's the writing is very very different and it's how to go through but for me personally it's a more complicated story because I when I was in my late what is 30s middle 30s I moved to United States and I I spent 10 years in the United States so I started speaking English I mean I learned English as a communication language when I was young but then there I had a full immersion and I started writing technical my technical word is written in English I've books physics which is nothing to do with books for a large public manuals about quantum gravity treaties about quantum gravity these are written in English and so I had to relearn writing completely because when I was writing in English me being Italian my colleagues would say okay it doesn't make any sense what is what are you doing I mean all this long contorted sentences that don't go where with all this because hence therefore seems to whatever I mean it's a so I had to relearn writing in English and then when I wrote an X amount of the first book that I wrote in Italian because I was taking notes in Italian and then I wrote in a version of Italian that actually sounded like English because in the meanwhile my writing style had evolved into I think and now I I find it easier to write the book for the large public in Italian because I still control the language better but then I go through the translation and I'm aware of all this difference of coding and I think it's a richness because if you have if you control two languages you have more tools also in English you can do a very contorted period with all the hands and and sometimes it works very very well it's fantastic it gives you an extra tool so I think the more language you know the better it is great thank you we've got a lady in the green jumper here I was just wondering like what do you think about modern like crossover between physics and philosophy because obviously back in ancient Greece like a lot of these ancient physicists were also philosophers and that's how they presented themselves but now there seems to be a bit more of a separation like at least within schooling between the humanities and the sciences and how do you think that's going to play out in like the science that's coming in the future is it going to be more separated from its current like inherent philosophical views yeah it's a very good question and it's the answer is a bit complicated that so when when aleximander started in Dallas aleximander started doing their stuff whatever it was and then there was this sort of pre-socratic as we called today we call them philosophers today they would not call them same philosophers because philosophies is a word invented later at the time of plateau by plateau I suppose is invented they would call themselves physicists and Aristotle call them physicists what were they doing well they were doing their stuff which is at the root of what became Western philosophy and at the root to what they became Western science and the separation was slow and it it went back and forth a number of time probably separation started if we believe plateau with socrates socrates is the first one socrates started that's what plateau says in in the fedo or in the in the apology in the fedo I think it started as a pupil an exagerant says well what I wanted to understand the shape of the earth and how things happen so the question of the physicist and then according to plateau socrates changed the conversation into moral what is beauty this kind of different things which now we interpret more as philosophical question but then Aristotle corpus part of its I mean it's biology it's the only name you could give it to it is biology and I have a I've written about Aristotle physics is really physics is while a part of Aristotle is what definitely we would call metaphysics so it was still very the tools separated clearly through the centuries and in middle ages were different because the scientific project in the around the Mediterranean was largely dead in the in the while the philosophical theological process continue in other ways scientific project went through the Indians and came back through the Persians and the Arabs in a very funny story and the Renaissance you wouldn't say Galileo is a scientist or a philosopher is definitely both his main dialogue is with Aristotle he certainly engages in questions which have to do about science but you wouldn't doubt calling it scientist and he wrote the first equations how things fall okay I'm still Newton was calling the title of Newton book is philosophy and at rise to be a philosophy and at rise so while tools were separating and style was separating the the connection was still very close and has been closed for longer and the separation has gone more and more strong until recently I think the complete breaking was recently and especially the education has separated very recently I mean all the major philosophy scientist of the 20th century Einstein Niels Bohr, Dirac, Heisenberg they all had a deep education in philosophy Einstein has made continuous reference to Hume, to Mach, to Kant, Einstein read the three criticism Kant before being 15 so the it's only a few generations that scientists don't study philosophy and the philosopher don't study science and it's a disaster in my opinion it makes it's not because they're the same thing because really there is a different tools different style different project project but it's common effort of understanding the world which if you just look at one side and not the other it becomes much more shallow it doesn't mean that single person should know everything I mean a chemist can do just chemics and but if a chemist has no idea about physics it's doesn't understand chemistry and so and I believe the physicist doesn't have an idea about the physiological problems in methodology as well as in metaphysics you want and depending what he does he has a very much very shallow so I think that in the contemporary culture a lot of my colleagues physicists who came out very strongly you know saying in this country in particular philosophy stupid is dead because now we have science it's just why can it be so stupid it's just not true and vice versa there is a big bunch of the scientific world perhaps a little bit less in this country but you know it's dominating in Germany or in Italy which says you know science does not think highly good okay yeah it does not think you think I mean so it's I think it's a shadowing of the of of particular particular views that closer closer eyes I think it's temporary I mean there always be people specialized we cannot know everything but culture as a whole is a complicated conversation which we learn from one another from different directions and I think best scientists of the future will have like the great scientists of the past a philosophical understanding of the philosophical problem and the best philosophers like philosophy of the past and can't do Newton there was no understanding of a can't with our Newton we'll have an understanding of contemporary science to what one quick question then from quick to what extent does quantum mechanics require or benefit from philosophy as someone who's coming from outside it it's very much changing your idea of the very nature of reality and I guess has led to a lot of cod philosophy that that's nonsense a lot the amount of nonsense around quantum is just majestic if you go to if you really want nonsense go to Google and say quantum what comes out is just horrendous but of course one of the guys are very serious stuff with very open problems and the the foundational paper 1925 Heisenberg on quantum mechanics out of which then born and the other but the paper we really found it the key of the the opening of the paper it's almost word-by-word taken from Ernst Mac philosophical writings about his imperial criticism or whatever says Isma says I'm going to address the quantum phenomena using only observable quantities and not assuming that there are things beyond what is observable you know which is an anti-realistic statement which is deeply deeply rooted into the into the philosophical climate of Germany 1920s so the influence of philosophy in the birth of quantum mechanics was very direct very very direct then of course in the 20s century there has been this anti-philosophical attitude in physics the quantum mechanics in the 30s was very much debated when Einstein and Bohr debated the famously quantum mechanics was the level of philosophy after the war especially when theoretical physics mostly moved from Russia and Europe to to the US there was a an anti-philosophical attitude which was rooted in philosophy of course I mean this is funny thing was rooted in in the Vienna school right of the neo-positivism but the the physicists are funny because when they talk against philosophy they're just quote-and-philosophers when they will go strongly against metaphysics they're just repeating what was said in the Vienna school by Karen up and there was an anti- metaphysical attitude was just one particular philosophical school so it's just been shallow not to nowadays the we're out of that last Nobel Prize which was given by three experimenters and through the two experimenters one experimented tradition if you're rooted in motivation of Nobel Prize is very interesting because it makes very clear that it's about quantum foundations entanglement all this kind of stuff it makes very clear that it come from a line of research that basically come from John Bell who was who could not publish his things because his science colleagues were telling him that philosophy is not science okay and out of that came quantum foundation quantum computers and the last three Nobel Prize so once again this is when in the 60s philosophical questions about how to think about quantum mechanics some people were posing them while the anti-philosophy in physics were saying that's nonsense so much nonsense and that we have quantum computing thanks to these questions great so if the gentleman from there move just pass that through and I'll try to get through as many as possible hello my question is about the naturalistic approach of ancient scientists if that approach was not interrupted by other means such as religion church maybe Aristotle school do you think that the level of science today that we have could have been different for example could have could we have achieved to find the unified theory of universe or quantum gravity thank you you know it's just yeah I see what they're saying on the one hand you know you can do history with a lot of if and if if this would have happened whatever that happened it's extremely risky business so quantum mechanics something file that about the universe is going 20 century after a long sequence of new tools didn't exist in the past so it's hard to to make history with hypothetical and counterfactual so but certainly there was a collapse of the common intellectual project that was ancient science that happened there is some historians that work on that happens in in in at least in two phases at the end of the toward the end of antiquity one phase is nothing to do with religion and the expansion of the Roman Empire the expansion of the Roman Empire was brutal and it was it shut down a lot of theoretical investigations and practically investigation so one of the things that has happened as far as I understand I'm not in historians you might be closer to that is that the expansion of the Roman Empire blocked take down a lot of the Greek civilization clothes school a vivid example of that is our committees we have the text of our committees the text of our committees have a level of mathematical death the complexity that I think I'm not exaggerating you have to wait what vice-trusts and 19th century analysis committees essentially was doing integrals and limits and the mathematical committees is more advanced than the medical Newton from the perspective of mathematics why didn't why nothing came out of that it was very easy because of Rome destroyed Syracuse killed Archimedes and nobody else there was nobody else concretely could do that the Romans wouldn't care about that and they they I mean it was brutal Syracuse has been there a little up over serious because Syracuse the city where committees lived is is Taumina they still have the the theater there and in the theater at the time of Archimedes what the theater was meant for is to do Sophocles Eurypides and you know a deep was so that was a kind of a thing going on there then Romans came conquered it and if you go there that the people tell you that it was rearranged to do the thing that a Roman liked which is to have the lions eating people and people killing one another so that's the rival of you know jump down in civilization that happened Corintus was destroyed Athens was half destroyed so there is a real stop in development of theoretical investigation with Roman Empire which continued a little bit in Alexander because Alexander continued to have the museum and the people working there told me of course writes in the Roman empires continued for a while but then there was a Christianization of the Empire to why for written about which another book I'll plug later yes so is it on sale by the book of his wife's wonderful I'm reading it which was really the death of everything to the last philosophy school closed the old schools that were millennium back to platinum is total closed the Alexander develop was closed and it was dramatic I mean the the mathematical value of that we find in Ptolemy came back to the Mediterranean through India okay it's stonishing it's the matter developed the Mediterranean the sign and cosine I'm sure you all studied sine and cosine you know why school sign the function that does like that right it's called sign because the Greek called it cord because if you have a round thing and you cord is a string if you if you tie a string that function is a function of the angle the length of the string like cord was translated in Hindi in Hindi into a in Sanskrit Sanskrit world that that means string which is just something like that I don't know if anybody knows Sanskrit then when the Indian mathematics was brought back to the Persian Empire was translating in Arabic because Arabic and meanwhile was and the sound Ja was taken translated in Arabic Ja but it happened to be similar to Arabic world that means pocket okay and so when pocket was translated in the 14th 13th 14th century back into Mediterranean from Arabic to Latin was translated sinus okay because the sinus means like a concavity like that okay so we call this thing sinus which is the thing that was invented by Greek mathematics with a name which is a Latin name that come from Arab name that come from the Indian name that come from from the Greek translation into Indian and you know it's beautiful story about but the incredible thing is that from Egypt and Syracuse where our committees was using this one that is it had to go to India and come back because in the Mediterranean we killed all the people who knew these things sorry I got lost in the word if you pass the microphone back to that lady in stripes jump and we'll try to get around as many as possible sorry I just want to say you're a really big inspiration to me I read all of your books when I was 17 so I really respect you but I just wanted to ask you mentioned the importance of drawing the connection between the humanities and the science and I was just wondering do you think there's also significance between the combination of the sciences and the arts it's it's much or less obvious that it direct influence it's effective for one of the others but I think that I mean I come from a from a cultural and educated man or woman if he doesn't know the arts it misses something major about the beauty of what exists and we can do and if we if it doesn't know the science misses a major part of what we know about the world and if we look at the history of hard history it's not difficult to see how common ideas develop you asked about quantum mechanics quantum mechanics one of the ways to think about quantum mechanics is the idea that a particle by itself doesn't have a properties is only referenced to other properties that okay and and this idea came out very strong in 1925-26 in Italy which are no better in exactly those year 25-26 theater Prandello was writing this beautiful place whose main idea is that you as a human don't have an identity and you have a different one with respect to to any other one I mean it's all is that a coincidence is that no it's not a coincidence it's a direct influence it's not a direct influence but is that what was happening in the civilization in Europe in the 20s I mean some of the abandoning the idea at Cubism is the same period okay Picasso and friends were making a painter with the same thing is different from different perspectives it's a this complexity of the the the abandoning of the idea that there's a single clear perspective you can isolate the thing itself so there is a there's a commonality of things going on which doesn't mean that Picasso should have learned quantum mechanics or or Prandello or vice versa but it's a common I think it's a common story and I think it's fine if we go to our education we learn science or we do theater or we do visual arts but I worked as a academic trying to build bridges and to especially this country I'm learning it's very early in this country in which you you serve is too early I mean why why a 15 somebody has to choose whether be ignorant about Shakespeare or be ignorant about Maxwell that's stupid you don't want to be ignorant about one of that if you want to learn more have a larger basis and then of course you specialize because you're gonna give you a contributor I mean I'm not an artist I can't paint I shouldn't paint because I'm better with equations but but I think the it's the more we we keep educations on a larger basis it seems to me the more we do better artists and better scientists we're going to there's quite a few questions so I'm going to demand shorter answers okay sorry so if you can pass the microphone back there and then I'm gonna start moving to the back and I'll try to get to yes and no questions not really yes or no but so do you think that the religious texts especially like the current major monotheistic religions would be inspired by Annex Amanda's approach to evolution you know from water and soil and from one organism to another because especially in the Islamic tests you have some of them at least the formation of a fertilized egg the creation of a fertilized egg of Adam inside soil and water and that kind of model so what's the question exactly like if I think that no it's a miss the one thing we said at the beginning do you think that there's a connection between the Annex Amanda's you know approach to evolution and the religious texts that came afterwards in this time such as the Islamic tests and the ones in the monotheistic religions because they do reference the kind of creation of Adam especially Islamic tests from a fertilized egg in soil in water and etc no I think there's a common ground from which there's a number of the there is a richness of common histories about how all came out which are more ancient the both I think I mean that we have histories and histories do you think that it's possible that an Annex Amanda was influenced by the same same things that went on to influence their sort of the common ancestor yes that's right that's right I try to find I mean there's a there's some hypothesis in that in the Bible during the Deuteronomy and there are some pieces in which it talks about the earth's been suspended over the abyss it was written exactly at the time shortly after an Ximander what is so there have been some speculations that whoever in Israel wrote that knew about about those ideas it's possible but I think it's far-fetched hello good evening I was wondering there were other big new ideas or you know very modern forms of thinking in an Ximander's work on top of like thinking that humans could have evolved from from another species or the fact that it could be a round planet with the sky around it the other you know unexpected ideas that then weren't found again way later on in in physics I think you went through everything that's quite limited sources under yes let me just correct one thing it's this is not round in an Ximander it's a funny shape it became around just a little bit later which is one of the reason people get confused about that because the people say oh an Ximander has a earth which is sort of a cylinder and that's obviously wrong and shortly later somebody says this is round and that's obviously right and and this is silly right because there is is not a sphere it's it's a cylinder is just a first approximation very bad a sphere is a better approximation better but but then there is it's like a pier and then there's not even that and the tough thing was not to go from the cylinder to the sphere in fact that's the lesser generation presumably permenities of Pythagoras we don't exactly came from the idea of the spherical earth that the hard part was to go from us lying on something to the floating to the floating the lady there right in front of you yes she's been waiting while thank you I'm trying to do two yes or no questions I want to go back to humanities and science and I'm biased I also studied philosophy like you in the Italian books and then I went on to study philosophy of science in Italy at university so the first question is that when we talk about humanities and science we keep going back then to philosophy as a particular discipline where those connections happen and then within that there is this particular aspect of philosophy that is interest in science and scientists thinking my sense from back then 30 plus years ago when I studied this is that it was a rare thing then to have an interest in science as part of the philosophical community is getting rarer and rarer my kids in this country are not studying philosophy of school and so the question is are we actually losing interest in philosophy in particular as part of the humanities or is this less traction and if we do that the bridges with science will be even more severe and the second question is directly to you is are you a rarity or are the more scientists like leading scientists who are interested in building those bridges and do we have the right incentives in science in academia to take an active interest in humanities the way you do going to the first I don't know I think countries are different from one another and the way education is organized is different it is my impression that the UK is particularly separated within philosophy of science has been growing in the last decades I would say but I'm not sure regarding the second question I'm not very rare there are many others that like me have a similar I would say the majority of my friends in science have the same opinions I have the same vision I have but definitely there is a big chunk of the scientific community which does not share these ideas it seems to me that is moving so the the stronger anti-humanism especially anti-philosophical attitude of Steven Beinberg or Stephen Hawking or others I think it's less fashionable than 20 years ago so we've got about three minutes I'm going to try to do three questions and then in a sort of quick fire there's a gentleman there in the leather jacket in the middle brown leather jacket you've been looking me and then there's a gentleman behind as well and then we'll grab a third as well so sort of that wherever the microphone is because you've got my friend so it's something you say got me thinking when you said that an axiomander was able to convince people and was brave enough to do that and that was sort of a key factor to spread his idea across countries over the years thinking about that in the modern times and our years ahead do you think that it's harder for scientists to build that thrust relationship with the public and if so what is the role of scientists and science to convince people and make people comfortable with revolutionary ideas so I have to breathe but let me break it this into an axiomander was successful remarkably successful in his cosmological evolution so the Greek world accept an axiomander picture of Earth in the middle and it became almost the mark of the Greek cosmology the fact that the sky is all around and it remained through the Roman time through the medieval time around the Mediterranean it was far less successful in convincing everybody about his naturalistic interpretation of phenomena like rain earthquakes and I'm not sure he convinced the ancient world he's that that realistic approach was known was one on the table but was not dominating like it became dominating only in the in the Renaissance regarding the second question I mean it's just a matter of time I think we have a cosmological big revolution science happen but they take decades centuries they all have taken decades centuries you know you open newspaper the science have discovered that it doesn't happen nobody opened the newspaper say new don't have discovered the loves in universe let's quickly grab the gentleman that yeah and then we might have thank you for fascinating talk I was here I'm here I was very very struck by something you said at the beginning Carla I keep coming back to it it's about the singular nature of this this scientific revolution that it happened one time one place in history as far as we know I think that's what you were saying I was scratching my head trying to think of something equivalent I couldn't let me writing or farming or tool use or art even religion all seem to occur at different times different places sometimes the same time and this I keep coming back to that is it possible it could never have happened I think it was possible could ever happen I'm not sure and this is a big thing I'm not sure whether writing and or agriculture of these things were invented one time or the other time I think we I think there's a debate in history and I think this debates are dangerous because always culturally and politically I mean you know in the west at some point we got convinced that the rest of the world was stupid as we only had okay then we realized that this is silly and the west of the the non-western part of the world was big huge contribution of civilization but then there was this anti-colonization thing for which whatever happened in China and or in India and in Mediterranean had to be separated it doesn't make any sense and people were going back and forth there was been a long conversation between everything was very connected it seems to me from what I read from the story answer so do I really believe the story that writing was invented many times maybe was invented in China then few centuries later became what we call the the the Egyptian I mean I don't I don't know I think we're pretty much in dark about that that particular discovery of the earth the shape of the earth we have data about that we have a data point about that's really happened once it's a surprising it's very surprising and that's what shocked me about the next man we have returned I promise one more question and I'd love to do it's very quick two minutes I don't know if we can get a mic down here and then I'll anyone with any other questions is just gonna have to buy the book and guilt him socially into into asking the questions this is the last three question I'm afraid the lady here they're kind of like ideas of new fairies being discovered in each one being like a step closer to like a fully grand unified fairy we're gonna get close to somewhat of an objective truth or we're just gonna keep leaning towards the kind of observations that match our perception of the universe as humans I think we're I don't know about the future obviously but my impression is that everybody who talks about the grand unified theory being behind the corner is just completely out of of touch with reality I think we're still you know Newton Newton's a guy who got the biggest jump and he described himself famously as you know a kid that was discovered a few things in front of the ocean of their known I think we're still there I think that's an excellent place to end thank you very much indeed for coming