Anaximander

Agora

Anaximander

c. 610–546 BCE

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

The source of everything is not a familiar stuff like water but something boundless and undefined, from which all things arise and return.

Placement

Ancient Greek · West Asia & North Africa · Metaphysics, Science

Called a pupil of Thales by the ancient doxographers; identified the apeiron, the boundless, as the origin of all things.

Key ideas

Apeiron
Cosmic justice

Teachers: Thales of Miletus

Students: Anaximenes

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Influence

Influenced by 1

Thales of Miletus studied with

studied with disputed later tradition ✓
Known only from later tradition – Theophrastus’ ‘successor and pupil of Thales’, preserved by Simplicius (In Physica 24.13), and the Ionian succession in Diogenes Laertius 1.13; the succession may be a later construction. Simplicius, In Physica 24.13 Diels (DK 12 A9, after Theophrastus); Diogenes Laertius 1.13
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Thales of Miletus › c. 624–546 BCE

Influenced 3

Anaximenes taught

taught later tradition ✓
Known only from later tradition (Diogenes Laertius 2.3; Theophrastus, as preserved by Simplicius, In Physica 24.26, calls him only a ‘companion’); the succession may be a later construction. Diogenes Laertius 2.3; Simplicius, In Physica 24.26 Diels (DK 13 A5, after Theophrastus)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Anaximenes › c. 586–526 BCE
Pythagoras

influenced disputed ✓
Late ancient lives of Pythagoras (Porphyry, Iamblichus) name Anaximander among his teachers; the report is uncertain, and no particular doctrine can be traced from one to the other. Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras; Iamblichus, On the Pythagorean Life; SEP “Pythagoras”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata · InPhO
Pythagoras › traditionally c. 570–495 BCE
Xenophanes

influenced disputed
Xenophanes’ view that earth was once mixed with sea, inferred from fossils, continues Milesian inquiry like Anaximander’s; whether he heard Anaximander is uncertain. Xenophanes, DK 21 A33 (Hippolytus, Refutatio I.14), B29, B33; Anaximander, DK 12 A27; SEP “Xenophanes”
Evidence: AI draft
Xenophanes › c. 570–478 BCE

Position

Anaximander asked why any one element, such as water, should be the source of everything when the elements oppose one another. His answer was the apeiron – the boundless or indefinite – an inexhaustible, ageless source from which opposites like hot and cold separate out and to which they return. In his only surviving fragment, things “pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the ordering of time”: nature is governed by a kind of cosmic justice. He also pictured the earth resting unsupported at the centre of the cosmos and speculated that humans descended from fish-like creatures. His abstract principle marked a decisive step beyond observable stuffs.

Life & context

Anaximander, a younger fellow citizen and probably a pupil of Thales, worked in Miletus in the sixth century BCE. He is credited with the first Greek prose treatise on nature, with drawing an early map of the inhabited world and with introducing the gnomon, the pointer of the sundial, to Greece. Only a single fragment of his book survives.