Anaxagoras

Circa 500-Circa 428 b.c.e.

Astronomer and philosopher

Sources

Modern Ideas . Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae, Anatolia (in presentday Turkey). Around 480 b.c.e. he moved to Athens, where he lived for thirty years and taught a variety of students, including Pericles and possibly Socrates. Unfortunately, few of the writings of Anaxagoras have survived. When he declared that the Sun was an incandescent stone, he was prosecuted for impiety, although the charge was more a political attack on Pericles. He then went into exile and spent his last years at Lampsacus.

Cosmology. Aside from discovering the true cause of eclipses, Anaxagoras made some interesting assertions concerning the physical universe. He declared that natural objects are composed of infinitesimally small particles containing mixtures of all qualities. Accordingly, the nous (mind, reason, or intelligence) acts upon masses of these particles to produce objects. It seemed to him quite impossible that anything should come into being from what does not exist. For example, when ingested, simple and homogeneous nourishment such as bread or water helps produce hair, veins, arteries, sinews, bones, skin, and all the other parts of the human body.

Sources

Felix M. Cleve, The Philosophy of Anaxagoras: An Attempt at Reconstruction (New York: King’s Cross Press, 1949).

Geoffrey Stephen Kirk and John Earle Raven, eds., The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957).