ANAXIMANDER

ANAXIMANDER (c.610-547 B.C.)

Anaximander came from Miletus, the city in which Thales lived. He is supposed to have been a student of, or at least to have known the theories of, Thales. Unlike Thales, he wrote a book -- one of the first books in prose ever written -- which contained an account of the origins of the world, beginning with the earth and the heavens, and ending with the emergence of animal and particularly human life. This book was later given the title On Nature -- but this was a title given to many Pre-Socratic works.

He is said to have been "the first to draw an outline of earth and sea", that is, a map -- a circular plan in which the known regions of the world formed roughly equal segments. He was said to have led a colonizing expedition to Apollonia, and he visited Sparta. Apparently he "warned the Spartans to move into fields when an earthquake was imminent". The city of Miletus was in the earthquake belt and knew the warnings signs - such as the agitation of storks. He may have introduced the gnomon (vertical rod whose shadow indicates the sun's direction and height) to Greece. His death is supposed to have been soon after his fifty-eighth birthday in 547-6 B.C. We have only one sentence written by Anaximander, highlighted below in the quotation from Aristotle.

PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENTS

(A) INDEFINITE (APEIRON) [MATERIAL]

(1) "Of those who declared that the first principle is one, moving and indefinite, Anaximander... said that the indefinite was the first principle and element of things that are, and he was the first to call the first principle indefinite [apeiron]. He says that the first principle is neither water nor any other of the things called elements, but some other nature which is indefinite, out of which come to be all the heavens and the worlds in them. The things that are perish into the things out of which they come to be, "according to necessity, for they pay the penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time", as he says in rather poetical language." (R, 10)

-- Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (24.13-21)

(2) "This does not have a first principle, but seems to be the first principle of the rest, and to contain all things and steer all things, as all declare who do not fashion other causes aside from the infinite... and this is divine. For it is deathless and indestructible, as Anaximander says and most of the natural philosophers." (R, 11)

-- Aristotle, Physics (3.4 203b10-15)

(3) "He declares that what arose from the eternal and is productive of hot and cold was separated off at the coming to be of the cosmos, and a kind of sphere of flame from this grew around the dark mist about the earth like bark about a tree. When it was broken off and enclosed in certain circles, the sun, moon and stars came to be." (R, 11)

-- Pseudo-Plutarch, Miscellanies (179.2)

(B) COSMOLOGY

(1) "The earth's shape is curved, round, like a stone column. We walk on one of the surfaces and the other one is set opposite. The stars come to be as a circle of fire separated off from the fire in the cosmos and enclosed by dark mist. There are vents, certain tube-like passages at which the stars appear. For this reason, eclipses occur when the vents are blocked. The moon appears sometimes waxing sometimes waning as the passages are blocked. The circle of the sun is twenty-seven times <that of the earth> and that of the moon <18 times>, and the sun is highest, and the circles of the fixed stars are lowest." (R, 11)

-- Hippolytus, Refutation (1.6.3-5)

(2) "Anaximander says there is a circle 28 times the earth, like a chariot wheel, with its rim hollow and full of fire. It lets the fire appear through an orifice at one point, as through the nozzle of a bellows; and this is the sun."

-- Aetius (2.20.1)

(3) "Some, like Anaximander... declare that the earth is at rest on account of its similarity. For it is no more fitting for what is established at the center and equally related to the extremes to move up rather than down or sideways. And it is impossible for it to make a move simultaneously in opposite directions. Therefore, it is at rest of necessity." (R, 11)

-- Aristotle, On the Heavens (2.13 295b11-16)

(4) "The earth is in mid-air [aloft] not controlled by anything, but staying put because of its distance from all things."

-- Hippolytus, Refutation (1.6.3)

(1) "Anaximander says that the first animals were produced in moisture, enclosed in thorny barks. When their age increased they came out into the drier part, their bark broke off, and they lived a different mode of life for a short time." (R, 11)

-- Aetius (5.19.4)

(2) "He also declares that in the beginning humans were born from other kinds of animals, since other animals quickly manage on their own, and humans alone require lengthy nursing. For this reason, in the beginning they would not have been preserved if they had been like this." (R, 12)

-- Pseudo-Plutarch, Miscellanies (179.2)

(3) "Anaximander... believed that there arose from heated water and earth either fish or animals very like fish. In these humans grew and were kept inside as embryos up to puberty. Then finally they burst and men and women came forth already able to nourish themselves." (R, 12)

-- Censorinus, On the Day of Birth (4.7)

Summary

Anaximander argued that only that stuff which is apeiron (i.e. indefinite and infinite or boundless), can be capable of becoming everything else. This indefinite stuff is in motion. As a result of the motion, this indefinite stuff gives rise to hot and cold. The hot takes the form of fire, which is transformed into the Sun, the stars, etc. The cold takes the form of dark mist, and is transformed into moist air and then moist earth. The sun and stars act on the air and earth, drying them. There is a regular, ordered, law-like interaction.

-> Hot -> Fire ---------> Sun, stars, etc.

Apeiron stuff --> | |

-> Cold -> Dark Mist -> Moist Air -> Moist Earth

| |

Air Earth