Carlo Rovelli has written a book about Anaximander who was born around 610BCE in Miletus in modern day Turkey.

Anaximander wrote a treatise in prose called On Nature. This book is now lost and only one fragment remains quoted by Simplicius of Cilicia in his commentary on Aristotle’s Physics:

The effort to reconstruct Anaximander’s ideas from indirect sources has been extensive, but does ultimately show that this man was the first to undertake scientific thinking as we know it today. Anaximander was always searching for knowledge to progress his understanding of the world.

This is quite profound because at the time people believed in gods and regarded them as the source of earthquakes, thunder, and lightning. Anaximander regarded these events as natural phenomena. He understood that rainwater is water from the sea, rivers, and lakes that has been evaporated because of the sun’s heat. He also believed all animals originally came from the sea and understood that the planet Earth floated in space.