Anaximander

“ Again, Anaximander may be said to prepare the way for more modern conceptions of material evolution by regarding his primordial substance as eternal, and by looking on all generation as alternating with destruction, each step of the process being of course simply a transformation of the indestructible substance. ”

“ Even in theory, scientific or philosophical, the wholeness or unity of the many things of the world has sometimes been taken for just one more thing, as when Anaximander taught that it was "that thing which is no one of the world's things," or for one of the many things supposed by it to be unified, as when Thales so naïvely declared all things to be water. Anaximander and Thales were only ancient Greeks, albeit very wise and enlightened Greeks, living as early as 600 B.C., but in very recent times they have had followers. Electricity has been taken as the one force of all other forces. ”

“ There is another Anaximander, also of Miletus, a historian who wrote in the Ionic dialect.
Anaximenes 3. Anaximenes, [6] the son of Eurystratus, a native of Miletus, was a pupil of Anaximander. According to some, he was also a pupil of Parmenides. He took for his first principle air or that which is unlimited. He held that the stars move round the earth but do not go under it. He writes simply and unaffectedly in the Ionic dialect.
According to Apollodorus he was contemporary with the taking of Sardis and died in the 63rd Olympiad. ”

“ It is nothing strange to discover that Anaximander and the Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras have propounded theories regarding the structure of the cosmos, the origin and development of animals and man, and the nature of matter itself. Nowadays, so enormously involved has become the mass of mere facts regarding each of these departments of knowledge that no one man has the temerity to attempt to master them all. ”

“ Anaximander held at least one theory which, as vouched for by various copyists and commentators, entitles him to be considered perhaps the first teacher of the idea of organic evolution. According to this idea, man developed from a fishlike ancestor, "growing up as sharks do until able to help himself and then coming forth on dry land." (1) The thought here expressed finds its germ, perhaps, in the Babylonian conception that everything came forth from a chaos of waters. ”

“ Accordingly they say that what is infinite is something other than the elements, and from it the elements arise.—Arist. Phys. Γ. 204 b 22 (R. P. 16 b) .
It is clear that Anaximander is here contrasted with Thales and with Anaximenes. Nor is there any reason to doubt that the account given of his reasoning is substantially correct, though the form is Aristotle's own, and in particular the "elements" are an anachronism. [56] Anaximander started, it would seem, from the strife between the opposites which go to make up the world; the warm was opposed to the cold, the dry to the wet. ”

“ Anaximander, who himself was a Milesian, assigns the principle of all things to the Infinite, from whence all things flow, and into the same are corrupted; hence it is that infinite worlds are framed, and those dissolve again into that whence they have their origin. And thus he farther proceeds, For what other reason is there of an Infinite but this, that there may be nothing deficient as to the generation or subsistence of what is in Nature? There is his error, that he doth not acquaint us what this Infinite is, whether it be air, or water, or earth, or any other such like body. ”

“ They thus resemble modern evolutionists, since they regard the world with its infinite variety of forms as issuing from a simple mode of matter. More especially the cosmology of Anaximander resembles the modern doctrine of evolution in its conception of the indeterminate (τὸ ἄπειρον) out of which the particular forms of the cosmos are differentiated. ”

“ His philosophy is thus a step in advance of the theories of Thales, the conception of the Infinite, however vague, being superior to the idea of water constituting the first principle of all things. Anaximander occupied himself a great deal with mathematics and geography. To him is credited the invention of geographical maps and the first application of the gnomon or style fixed on a horizontal plane to determine the solstices and equinoxes.
Anaximenes (an-aks-im ́e-nēz) of Miletus, an ancient Greek (Ionic) philosopher, according to whom air was the first principle of all things. ”

“ Anaximander, however, concluded that men, because they require longer time than other animals to be hatched up, were at first generated in the bellies of fishes, and there nourished till they were able to defend and shift for themselves, and were then disgorged and cast upon dry land. ”

“ Anaximander, Leukippos, Demokritos, and, at a later date, Epicurus, held that they came into being and passed away ad infinitum, some always coming into being and others passing away. ”

“ In Anaximander and Anaximenes alone do we find any conception of possible progress; their thought was that as the world had taken time to become what it is, so in time it would pass, and as the entire universe had undergone alternate renewal and destruction in the past, that would be its history in the future. Aristotle, Ptolemy, and others appear to have held the curious notion that although everything terrestrial is evanescent, nevertheless the cosmos beyond the orbit of the moon is imperishable and eternal. ”

“ This conception is perhaps the first of these guesses through which the Greek mind attempted to explain the apparent fixity of the earth. To ask what supports the earth in space is most natural, but the answer given by Anaximander, like that more familiar Greek solution which transformed the cone, or cylinder, into the giant Atlas, is but another illustration of that substitution of unwarranted inference for scientific induction which we have already so often pointed out as characteristic of the primitive stages of thought. ”

“ Phys. p. 150, 20 (R. P. 18) .
14.The primary substance is not one of the "elements." Anaximander taught, then, that there was an eternal, indestructible something out of which everything arises, and into which everything returns; a boundless stock from which the waste of existence is continually made good. That is only the natural development of the thought we have ascribed to Thales, and there can be no doubt that Anaximander at least formulated it distinctly. ”

“ Only, be it observed, that while in the primitive Biblical idea this formless void precedes in time an ordered universe, in Anaximander's conception this formless infinitude is always here, is in fact the only reality which ever is here, something without beginning or ending, underlying all, enwrapping all, governing all. ”

“ Anaximander affirms that the circle of the moon is nineteen times bigger than the earth, and resembles the sun, its orb being full of fire; and it suffers an eclipse when the wheel makes a revolution,—which he describes by the divers turnings of a chariot-wheel, in the midst of it there being a hollow nave replenished with fire, which hath but one way of expiration. Xenophanes, that it is a condensed cloud. The Stoics, that it is mixed of fire and air. Plato, that it is a body of the greatest part fiery. ”

“ Anaximander says, that the sun itself in greatness is equal to the earth, but that the circle from whence it receives its respiration and in which it is moved is seven and twenty times larger than the earth. ”

“ On the contrary, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Archelaos, Xenophanes, Diogenes, Leukippos, Demokritos, and Epicurus are all mentioned together as holding the doctrine of "innumerable worlds" on every side of this one, [70] and the only distinction is that, while Epicurus made the distances between these worlds unequal, Anaximander said all the worlds were equidistant. [71] Zeller rejected this evidence [72] on the ground that we can have no confidence in a writer who attributes "innumerable worlds" to Anaximenes, Archelaos, and Xenophanes. ”

“ The object of research is firstly what is "the ordering of immortal ageless φύσις," and secondly, how it arose. Anaxagoras, who introduced Ionian science to Athens, had belonged to the school of Anaximenes (§ 122) . We know from Aristotle (loc. cit. p. 9 n. 1) that not only Anaximander, but most of the φυσιολόγοι, applied epithets like this to the Boundless. ”

“ Phil. vii. pp. 217 sqq.) . I should be quite willing to accept this account of the matter if I could find any evidence that they used the term at all. It is only in the case of Anaximander that there is even a semblance of such evidence, and I believe that to be illusory (p. 54, n. 2) . Moreover, Diels has shown that the first book of Theophrastos's great work dealt with the ἀρχή in the Aristotelian sense, and it is very unlikely that the word should have been used in one sense of Anaximander and in another of the rest. ”

“ The followers, however, of Hippasus, and Anaximander, and Thales the Milesian, are disposed to think that all things have been generated from one (an entity) , endued with quality. Hippasus of Metapontum and Heraclitus the Ephesian declared the origin of things to be from fire, whereas Anaximander from air, but Thales from water, and Xenophanes from earth. “For from earth,” says he, “are all things, and all things terminate in the earth.” [2] ”

“ The identification of the eternal motion with the diurnal revolution is insisted on by Teichmüller and Tannery, and is the real source of the very unnatural interpretation which they give to the word ἄπειρον. It was obviously difficult to credit Anaximander with a belief in an infinite body which revolves in a circle. The whole theory rests upon a confusion between the finite spherical κόσμος within the οὐρανός and the infinite περιέχον outside it. ”

“ It is to be noted, however, that while modern science assumes necessarily two correlative data or originative principles,—Force, namely, as well as Matter,—Anaximander seems to have been content {10} with the formulation of but one; and perhaps it is just here that a kinship still remains between him and Thales and other philosophers of the school. ”

“ Anaximenes, pupil of Anaximander, seems to have rebelled against the extreme materialism of his master. Perceiving that air is necessary to life, that the universe is surrounded by air, he was convinced that out of air all things have resulted. The process by which things grow is twofold, condensation (πύκνωσις) and rarefaction (ἀραίωσις) , or, in other words, heat and cold. From the former process result cloud, water and stone; from the latter, fire and aether. This theory is closely allied to that of Thales, but it is superior in that it specifies the processes of change. ”

“ And of the rest of the philosophers who, passing over the elements, have eagerly sought after something higher and nobler, some have discanted on the Infinite, of whom were Anaximander of Miletus, Anaxagoras of Clazomenæ, and the Athenian Archelaus, both of whom set Mind (νοῦς) above Infinity ”

“ When, however, we come to the motion of the world once it has been "separated off," we are on safer ground. It is certain that one of the chief features of early cosmology is the part. played in it by the analogy of an eddy in water or in wind, a δίνη (or δῖνος) , [82] and there seems to be little doubt that we are entitled to regard this as the doctrine of Anaximander and Anaximenes. ”

“ Anaximander's reason for conceiving the primary substance as boundless was, no doubt, as indicated by Aristotle, "that becoming might not fail." [67] It is not clear, however, that these words are his own, though the doxographers speak as if they were. It is enough for us that Theophrastos, who had seen his book, attributed the thought to him. And certainly his view of the world would bring home to him the need of a boundless stock of matter. The "opposites" are, we have seen, at war with one another, and their strife is marked by "unjust" encroachments on either side. ”

“ Anaxilĭdes, wrote some treatises concerning philosophers, and mentioned that Plato’s mother became pregnant by a phantom of the god Apollo, from which circumstance her son was called the prince of wisdom. Diogenes Laërtius, Plutarch.
Anaximander, a Milesian philosopher, the companion and disciple of Thales. He was the first who constructed spheres, asserted that the earth was of a cylindrical form, and taught that men were born of earth and water mixed together, and heated by the beams of the sun ”

“ By the opposite process of condensation, air first becomes clouds and, by further degrees of condensation, becomes successively water, earth, and rocks. The world resolves again in the course of time into the primal air. Anaximenes, like Anaximander, held the theory of "innumerable worlds," and these worlds are, according to the traditional view, successive. But here again Professor Burnet considers that the innumerable worlds may have been co-existent as well as successive. Anaximenes considered the earth to be a flat disc floating upon air. ”

“ So far he is in general agreement with Anaximander (q.v.) , but he differs from him in the solution of the problem, disliking, as a poet and a mystic, the primary matter which satisfied the patient researcher, and demanding a more vivid and picturesque element. ”

“ Much earlier, however, Anaximander of Miletus, who flourished not long after Thales, and is generally considered as his immediate disciple, seems to have been struck by the difficulty of accounting for the changes which a simple substance must be supposed to undergo, in order to produce an infinite variety of beings. ”