Historical Figures Codexery

Anaximander

Pre-Socratic philosopher who introduced the apeiron and advanced early science.

Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus who lived around 610–546 BC.[1][2] He is considered the first speculative astronomer and the author of the first surviving lines of Western philosophy.[3] Today, only a small amount of information about Anaximander's life and work survives.[4]

Quick Facts

Region
Western philosophy
Era
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Birthplace
Miletus, Ionian League
Main interests
  • Metaphysics
  • astronomy
  • geometry
  • geography

Facts from the source article.

Life and work

Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was born in the third year of the 42nd Olympiad (610 BC).[2] Anaximander was an early proponent of science and tried to observe and explain different aspects of the universe.[5] He was the first to conceive a mechanical model of the world, in which the Earth floats very still in the centre of the infinite.[6] Anaximander was a member of the Milesian school and studied under Thales.[7]

The 4th-century Byzantine rhetorician Themistius recorded that Anaximander was the "first of the known Greeks to publish a written document on nature."[8] Anaximander asserted that the universe's arrangement is geometric rather than monarchic, and this geometry keeps the Earth in balance.[9]

What the cited sources add

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy account notes that Anaximander's arguments have come down to us in the disguise of Aristotelian jargon.[3] It also states that some authors suspect eastern (Iranian) influence on Anaximander's ideas.[3] The same source reports that a fragment of a catalogue from the library of Taormina in Sicily has been found on which Anaximander's name can be read.[3] Graham's account in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that Anaximander thought human beings could not have been at their origin the way that they are now.[10]

Graham also notes that Anaximander's willingness to explain the world on its own terms, without recourse to divine generation, marks a new way of thinking.[10] The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy adds that Anaximander's Boundless is an impersonal something that is not only immortal but also unborn.[3]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Couprie, "Anaximander", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; "Anaximander" in Chambers's Encyclopædia. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 403. (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Hippolytus (?), Refutation of All Heresies (I, 5); In his Chronicles, as reported by Diogenes Laërtius, Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (II, 2). (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Couprie, "Anaximander", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. facts only, no text reused. iep.utm.edu
  4. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Themistius, Oratio 26, §317 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Park, David (2005) The Grand Contraption, Princeton University Press (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Aristotle, On the Heavens, ii, 13; "A column of stone", Aetius reports in De Fide (III, 7, 1), or "similar to a pillar-shaped stone", pseudo-Plutarch (III, 10). (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Porphyry, "Life of Pythagoras" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: McKirahan, "Philosophy before Socrates", p. 32–34; (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Anaximander" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: C. Mosse (1984) La Grece archaique d'Homere a Eschyle. Edition du Seuil. p 235 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  10. Graham, "Presocratics", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. facts only, no text reused. iep.utm.edu

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Anaximander (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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