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Anaximenes

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

Anaximenes , Greek philosopher, 6th cent. BC, last of the Milesian school founded by Thales . With Thales he held that a single element lay behind the diversity of nature, and with Anaximander he sought a principle to account for diversity. He believed that single element to be air. The principle of diversification he taught was rarefaction and condensation. Different objects were therefore merely different degrees of density of the one basic element. Anaximenes anticipates the spirit of modern scientific practice that seeks to explain qualitative differences quantitatively. Author... Read more

Anaximenes
Anaximenes The Greek philosopher Anaximenes (active 546 B.C.), last of the important philosophers of Miletus...physical law governing the universe. The details of the life of Anaximenes are almost totally unknown, but he is said to have flourished... Read more

Anaximenes
...the essence of matter as aer ('air') and explained the densities of various types of matter in terms of varying degrees of condensation of moisture. His writings no longer exist except as quoted by later authors. Anaximenes Anaximenes Anaximenes Read more

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	Value and the dynamics of being . ; ...to see how Intelligence orders the world and arranges each thing in the way best for it. (1) Presocratics like Thales and Anaximenes* thought they had caught sight of an underlying unity and ultimate causal ground in the matter of things. Their quest survives... Read more
	Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought. (Summaries And Comments).(Review) ; ...instance, Anaximander recognizes the need for generality in good explanation and anticipates the Principle of Sufficient Reason; Anaximenes uses concrete explanatory analogies; Xenophanes rejects polytheistic causality in favor of that of one Deity; Heraclitus demarcates... Read more
	The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World ; ...and hence co-create it. The vowel sounds, made by breath passing through the larynx, animate a text-literally. For breath is air, and air is soul in the ancient way of thinking that survived in the earliest Greek philosophy (that of Anaximenes, f Read more
	Ancient & modern ; ...single basic stuff lay at the heart of all matter. From the 6th century BC , Thales seems to have suggested it was water; Anaximenes air; Anaximander 'the infinite' (the equivalent of 'something unlike anything we know, but don't ask me exactly what'). Anaxagoras... Read more
	A fascinating introduction to science.(Daily Break) ; ...three thinkers Hakim calls the A team (the other two being Anaximenes and Anaxagoras). And science isn't always straight uphill. In other words, scientists sometimes goof , as when Anaximenes described the Earth as a flat disk. But Hakim also writes... Read more
	The Presocratics after Heidegger. (Summaries And Comments).(Review) ; ...thoughtful festival of interpretations. What does it mean and how is it feasible to think through and with Homer, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Empedocles, that is, early Greek philosophy and culture, in the wake of, and impelled by, Heidegger... Read more
	Does history end with postmodernism? Toward an ultramodern family therapy ; ...Thales, all things were derived from water, Anaximander argued that man, like any other animal, was descended from fish, and Anaximenes considered air to be the basic form of matter. All these hypotheses are compatible with modern positivist thinking. In contrast... Read more
	TECHNOQUEST ; ...philosophers". The first of these natural philosophers that history records were Thales and his contemporaries, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who lived in Greece around 600BC. Whewell chose the terms "science" and "scientist" from the Latin scire "to know". So "science... Read more
	Theories of Rain.(Short Story) ; ...rise and become condensed, what are they called? A. Clouds. Anaximenes, I tell the aunts--offering this scrap much as our cat, Cassandra...brings moles to the kitchen door and lays them at my feet--Anaximenes thought air might condense first to cloud, then to water... Read more
	The Searchers; On the importance of being dubious. ; ...stumbling attempts to do science, the pre-Socratics came up with odd conclusions: Thales thought everything was made of water; Anaximenes chose air. But the spirit of their inquiry -- arguing from observation to a general account of the physical world -- makes... Read more

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