When was anaximander born
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3 Key Ideas in Anaximander’s Theory of Nature
How is life created? What is its relationship to the environment? What are the most basic building blocks of the universe? This article investigates the answers to these questions, which together comprise Anaximander’s theory of nature. We begin by overviewing what little we know about Anaximander the man, who he associated with and how we have come to know of his work. Then Anaximander’s theory of life and its relationship to its environment is set out, and some of the more general elements of Anaximander’s approach to science are derived from this.
Lastly, Anaximander’s theory of the base element of the universe – that which he calls ‘the unlimited’ – is explained, and one possible interpretation is given. Anaximander was the second of three philosophers – often deemed the very first three philosophers – who lived in Miletus, a city in modern day Turkey. He was the second great philosopher of the Milesian school, after Thales but before Anaximenes and Pythagoras.
Anaximander: The First Philosophical Writer
Thales, who
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Anaximander, a student of Thales, was known for wearing ostentatious clothes.1 Like Thales, he was a multifaceted character. He was the first person to make a map of the world and thus was the first geographer. Anaximander also speculated that the earth was free-floating in space and not suspended by anything, whereas Thales said that it rested on water. He is said to have predicted an earthquake, something that modern science still cannot do.2
He took the concept of arche that was passed down to him and took it in a completely different direction.3 The arche of the universe is that fundamental principle from which everything originates. (See Post 26 for a further discussion of the term arche.) Unlike Thales and the other Presocratics, he deviated from the pattern of looking for a material cause as the first principle or arche. Rather, he chose something more abstract.
He also wrote a book called Peri Phuseos or On Nature, a quotation of which was recorded by Simplicius in the 6th century AD, making the book the first recorded
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· Anaximander
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A key ingredient of the evidence for a reconstruction of Anaximander's thought is the absence or presence in the source text of the word allêlois (àÏÏ‹ÏÔȘ), meaning «to each other». When this is absent, as it is on the page of the Venetian editio princeps of of Simplicius' Commentary which held sway to and even beyond, it is not clear to whom or what «the things that are» do «pay penalty (dikê) and retribution (tisis) for the injustice (adikia)», so a candidate has to be found, or imagined. When allêlois is present, it is obvious that they do so to each other. Even so, as we shall see, interpretations have been preferred or argued either way regardless of the presence or absence of allêlois. People endorsed a view they believed to be more philosophical, or (as some of us would say today) more exciting.
For many years the rst restoration of the correct text through the insertion of the word àÏÏ‹ÏÔȘfailed to percolate to the larger scholarly community. Presumably this happened because Christoph August Brandis, the rst to put it in ( ), paradoxicall
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