Anaximander

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Anaximander

610-Circa 545 b.c.e.

Astronomer and philosopher

Historical Record. Thought to have been a pupil of Thales, Anaximander of Miletus wrote treatises on geography, astronomy, and cosmology. However, only one sentence of his writings survives, so the writings of later scholars form the primary source of information about his discoveries. Anaximander is credited with having drawn the first map of the world. One hundred years later, the historian Herodotus found it simplistic and amusing:

It makes me smile to see how many people have made circular pictures of the earth, and how not a single one has done it sensibly! They all make the river Okeanos run around the earth as neatly as if were drawn with a compass, and make Asia and Europe equal in size!

If Anaximander’s map fit this description, its shape owed less to exploration and actual measurement than to a scientific desire for order and symmetry.

Evolution. Anaximander believed the world derived from a source called the apeiron (unlimited). His notions about the origin of animal and human life, though fanciful, bear an uncanny resemblance to modern evolutionary theories. Later writers report his claim that people must have originally been born from non-human creatures, on the ground that human (unlike animal) offspring require a long period of nursing and care in order to survive. If they had originally been born into the world from (and as) human beings, he reasoned, the species would have perished in the first generation. On this assumption, he argued that in the beginning, fishlike creatures arose from warm water and earth. Human beings grew inside them, enclosed like embryos, and remained within their protective envelopes until they reached the age of puberty. Then “the fishlike creatures burst apart and men and women who were now able to feed and take care of themselves stepped forth” onto dry land.