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The name of Thales marks the period when the Greek mind, breaking away from theology, laid the foundation of science by seeking a natural explanation for the world and its phenomena. The work which he began was continued by a succession of thinkers, of whom ANAXIMANDER, also a native of Miletus, stands next in time. In the old age of Thales, Anaximander may have come under his personal influence; he must certainly have been filled by his example with the new spirit of inquiry. But Thales' solution of the problem of the universe could not satisfy him. Recognizing that the world is the scene of change -- on the one hand of growth, and on the other of dissolution -- he was impelled to believe that matter exists in some simple state whence all things proceed, to which they return; but with a wise hesitation he forbore to speak in precise terms of this original state. He felt that neither water, nor air, nor fire, nor any other known thing, could be the principle of the universe. These are limited and complex, and they exist but for a time and perish; the principle must be infinite, formless, and eternal. Nor is it enough for us to conceive matter in its simplest form. Matter has qualities such as Heat and Cold, Moisture and Dryness, which seemed to him to be incapable of analysis, and to be therefore Primary. Matter again is dead, and without an original Energy it cannot change or develop. Lastly, in view of the profound differences of things, he felt he had no warrant for following Thales in reducing them all to one element. By Anaximander, therefore, the original substance was conceived as the sum of the elements of different things, existing in a formless mass, possessing the primary qualitites, and acted on by a latent force. As these elements combine and separate from the mass, individual things are formed. But the separation is only for a time. In language which reminds us how close was the alliance in his day between philosophy and poetry, Anaximander says: "From this do all things come into being, and in this, as is meet, are they again dissolved, for each in turn pays to the other the penalty of injustice."
The influence of the previous age is still present. The principle of the universe, infinite and formless, recalls the Oceanus of Homer and the Chaos of Hesiod; but to Anaximander it is less a subject of fixed belief than a statement of the limit which existing knowledge placed upon speculation. Science, he felt, must seek to reduce one by one the number of different elements, and must not begin by assuming that they are all forms of one and the same principle. Anaximander is said by Diogenes to have invented the gnomon, and by Pliny to have discovered the obliquity of the ecliptic; statements which, at least, indicate that he occupied himself with science as well as philosophy.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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