Anaxagoras

For other uses, see Anaxagoras (disambiguation).

Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras, part of a fresco in the National University of Athens.
Born	c. 500 BCE Clazomenae
Died	c. 428 BCE (aged around 72) Lampsacus
Era	Ancient philosophy
Region	Western Philosophy
School	Pluralist school
Main interests	Natural philosophy
Notable ideas	Cosmic mind (Nous) ordering all things
Influenced by Milesian school
Influenced Archelaus, Pericles

Anaxagoras (Greek: Ἀναξαγόρας, Anaxagoras, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese. According to Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch he fled to Lampsacus due to a backlash against his pupil Pericles.

Anaxagoras is famous for introducing the cosmological concept of Nous (mind), as an ordering force. He regarded material substance as an infinite multitude of imperishable primary elements, referring all generation and disappearance to mixture and separation respectively.

Biography

Anaxagoras appears to have had some amount of property and prospects of political influence in his native town of Clazomenae in Asia Minor. However, he supposedly surrendered both of these out of a fear that they would hinder his search for knowledge. Valerius Maximus preserves a different tradition: Anaxagoras, coming home from a long voyage, found his property in ruin, and said: "If this had not perished, I would have." A sentence, denoted by Maximus, as being "possessed of sought-after wisdom!". Although a Greek, he may have been a soldier of the Persian army when Clazomenae was suppressed during the Ionian Revolt.

In early manhood (c. 464–461 BC) he went to Athens, which was rapidly becoming the centre of Greek culture. There he is said to have remained for thirty years. Pericles learned to love and admire him, and the poet Euripides derived from him an enthusiasm for science and humanity.

Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens. His observations of the celestial bodies and the fall of meteorites led him to form new theories of the universal order. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a mass of blazing metal, larger than the Peloponnese. He was the first to explain that the moon shines due to reflected light from the sun. He also said that the moon had mountains and he believed that it was inhabited. The heavenly bodies, he asserted, were masses of stone torn from the earth and ignited by rapid rotation. He explained that though both sun and the stars were fiery stones, we do not feel the heat of the stars because of their enormous distance from earth. He thought that the earth is flat and floats supported by 'strong' air under it and disturbances in this air sometimes causes earthquakes. These speculations made him vulnerable in Athens to a charge of impiety. Diogenes Laertius reports the story that he was prosecuted by Cleon for impiety, but Plutarch says that Pericles sent Anaxagoras to Lampsacus for his own safety after the Athenians began to blame him for the Peloponnesian war.

About 450 BC, according to Laertius, Pericles spoke in defense of Anaxagoras at his trial. Even so Anaxagoras was forced to retire from Athens to Lampsacus in Troad (c. 434–433 BC). He died there in around the year 428 BC. Citizens of Lampsacus erected an altar to Mind and Truth in his memory, and observed the anniversary of his death for many years.

Anaxagoras wrote a book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have survived, through preservation in work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the sixth century AD.

Cosmological theory

Anaxagoras, depicted as a medieval scholar in the Nuremberg Chronicle

All things have existed from the beginning. But originally they existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in number and inextricably combined. All things existed in this mass, but in a confused and indistinguishable form. There were the seeds (spermata) or miniatures of wheat and flesh and gold in the primitive mixture; but these parts, of like nature with their wholes (the homoiomereiai of Aristotle), had to be eliminated from the complex mass before they could receive a definite name and character. Mind arranged the segregation of like from unlike; panta chremata en omou eita nous elthon auta diekosmese. This peculiar thing, called Mind (Nous), was no less illimitable than the chaotic mass, but, unlike the logos of Heraclitus, it stood pure and independent (mounos ef eoutou), a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations and everywhere the same. This subtle agent, possessed of all knowledge and power, is especially seen ruling in all the forms of life.^{[citation needed]}

Mind causes motion. It rotated the primitive mixture, starting in one corner or point, and gradually extended until it gave distinctness and reality to the aggregates of like parts, working something like a centrifuge, and eventually creating the known cosmos. But even after it had done its best, the original intermixture of things was not wholly overcome. No one thing in the world is ever abruptly separated, as by the blow of an axe, from the rest of things.

It is noteworthy that Socrates (Plato, Phaedo, 98 B) accuses Anaxagoras of failing to differentiate between nous and psyche, while Aristotle ("Metaphysics, Book I") objects that his nous is merely a deus ex machina to which he refuses to attribute design and knowledge.

Anaxagoras proceeded to give some account of the stages in the process from original chaos to present arrangements. The division into cold mist and warm ether first broke the spell of confusion. With increasing cold, the former gave rise to water, earth and stones. The seeds of life which continued floating in the air were carried down with the rains and produced vegetation. Animals, including man, sprang from the warm and moist clay. If these things be so, then the evidence of the senses must be held in slight esteem. We seem to see things coming into being and passing from it; but reflection tells us that decease and growth only mean a new aggregation (synkrisis) and disruption (diakrisis). Thus Anaxagoras distrusted the senses, and gave the preference to the conclusions of reflection. Thus he maintained that there must be blackness as well as whiteness in snow; how otherwise could it be turned into dark water?

Anaxagoras marked a turning-point in the history of philosophy. With him speculation passes from the colonies of Greece to settle at Athens. By the theory of minute constituents of things, and his emphasis on mechanical processes in the formation of order, he paved the way for the atomic theory.

Literary references

Anaxagoras appears as a character in The Ionia Sanction, by Gary Corby

See also

• Anaxagoras (crater) on the Moon
• Squaring the circle
• Socialism, Utopian and scientific

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Further reading

• Bakalis Nikolaos (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing, Victoria, BC., ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
• Barnes J. (1979). The Presocratic Philosophers, Routledge, London, ISBN 0-7100-8860-4, and editions of 1982, 1996 and 2006
• Burnet J. (1892). Early Greek Philosophy A. & C. Black, London, OCLC 4365382, and subsequent editions, 2003 edition published by Kessinger, Whitefish, Montana, ISBN 0-7661-2826-1
• Cleve, Felix M. (1949). The Philosophy of Anaxagoras: An attempt at reconstruction King's Crown Press, New York OCLC 2692674; republished in 1973 by Nijhoff, The Hague, as The Philosophy of Anaxagoras: As reconstructed ISBN 90-247-1573-3
• Curd, Patricia (2007). Anaxagoras of Clazomenae : Fragments and Testimonia : a text and translation with notes and essays University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Ontario, ISBN 978-0-8020-9325-7
• Davison, J. A. (1953). "Protagoras, Democtitus, and Anaxagoras". Classical Quarterly 3 (N.s): 33–45. 
• Gershenson, Daniel E. and Greenberg, Daniel A. (1964) Anaxagoras and the birth of physics Blaisdell Publishing Co., New York, OCLC 899834
• Graham, Daniel W. (1999). "Empedocles and Anaxagoras: Responses to Parmenides" Chapter 8 of Long, A. A. (1999) The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 159–180, ISBN 0-521-44667-8
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1965). "The Presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus" volume 2 of A History of Greek Philosophy Cambridge University Press, Cambridge OCLC 4679552; 1978 edition ISBN 0-521-29421-5
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962). A History of Greek Philosophy. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
• Kirk G. S.; Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M. (1983) The Presocratic Philosophers: a critical history with a selection of texts (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-25444-2; originally authored by Kirk and Raven and published in 1957 OCLC 870519
• Mansfield, J. (1980). "The Chronology of Anaxagoras' Athenian Period and the Date of His Trial". Mnemosyne 33: 17–95. doi:10.1163/156852580X00271. 
• Sandywell, Barry (1996). Presocratic Reflexivity: The Construction of Philosophical Discourse, c. 600-450 BC. 3. London: Routledge. 
• Schofield, Malcolm (1980). An Essay on Anaxagoras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 
• Taylor, A.E. (1917). "On the Date of the Trial of Anaxagoras". Classical Quarterly 11 (2): 81–87. doi:10.1017/S0009838800013094. 
• Taylor, C. C. W. (ed.) (1997). Routledge History of Philosophy: From the Beginning to Plato, Vol. I, pp. 192 – 225, ISBN 0-203-02721-3 Master e-book ISBN, ISBN 0-203-05752-X (Adobe eReader Format) and ISBN 0-415-06272-1 (Print Edition).
• Teodorsson, Sven-Tage (1982). Anaxagoras' theory of matter. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg, Sweden, ISBN 91-7346-111-3, in English
• Wright, M.R. (1995). Cosmology in Antiquity. London: Routledge. 
• Zeller, A. (1881). A History of Greek Philosophy: From the Earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, Vol. II, translated by S. F. Alleyne, pp. 321 – 394

External links

• Anaxagoras entry by Patricia Curd in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Anaxagoras", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews, http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Anaxagoras.html .
• Weisstein, Eric W., Anaxagoras of Clazomenae (ca. 500–ca. 428 BC) from ScienceWorld.
• Anaxagoras in English and Greek, Select Online Resources
• Translation and Commentary from John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy.
• Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Anaxagoras, translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925).