What is Anaximander best known for?
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What is Anaximander best known for?
Anaximander was the author of the first surviving lines of Western philosophy. He speculated and argued about “the Boundless” as the origin of all that is. He also worked on the fields of what we now call geography and biology. Moreover, Anaximander was the first speculative astronomer.
Who is Anaximander and what did he do?
Anaximander was the first astronomer to consider the Sun as a huge mass, and consequently, to realize how far from Earth it might be, and the first to present a system where the celestial bodies turned at different distances. Furthermore, according to Diogenes Laertius (II, 2), he built a celestial sphere.
What did Anaximander think the world was made of?
Anaximander did not believe the universe he saw had always existed. He said it had grown from a seed – a primordial substance called Apeiron. The Apeiron was infinite and could not be created or destroyed. Everything we can sense in the universe had grown from it.
What is the first principle of Anaximander?
Anaximander was a pupil of Thales – Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian. He said that a certain infinite nature is first principle of the things that exist. From it come the heavens and the worlds in them. It is eternal and ageless, and it contains all the worlds.
Who said the world came from water?
| Thales of Miletus | |
|---|---|
| Notable ideas | Philosophical inquiry Water is the arche Thales’ theorem Intercept theorem Static electricity |
| Influences Babylonian astronomy Ancient Egyptian mathematics Ancient Egyptian religion Possibly Homer | |
| Influenced Pythagoras Anaximander Anaximenes Xenophanes |
What idea do Thales and Anaximander have in common?
These philosophers all tried to answer the central question: what was the underlying “stuff” of the universe. All four believed it was a material substance rather than mental or spiritual.
What is the meaning of Anaximander?
Definitions of Anaximander. a presocratic Greek philosopher and student of Thales who believed the universal substance to be infinity rather than something resembling ordinary objects (611-547 BC)
What did Anaximenes believe?
Anaximenes is best known for his doctrine that air is the source of all things. In this way, he differed with his predecessors like Thales, who held that water is the source of all things, and Anaximander, who thought that all things came from an unspecified boundless stuff.
What did Anaximander say about the Earth?
Anaximander described the Earth as rounded and circular with two plane surfaces (not necessarily a flat disk, more like a cylinder or ‘stone pillar’), which was suspended freely in space. It stays where it is because it is equidistant from everything else in the Universe.
Why did Thales believe everything was water?
Aristotle’s lines in Metaphysics indicate his understanding that Thales believed that, because water was the permanent entity, the earth floats on water. Thales may have reasoned that as a modification of water, earth must be the lighter substance, and floating islands do exist. Herodotus (The Histories, II.
What did anaximenes believe?
Does Anaximenes believe in God?
It was said that Anaximenes believed that there was a God within the air. Anaximander, likewise, believed that the apeiron was of almost divine importance. The Milesian’s use of the word “God” was not the same as our modern understanding of the word.
What is the boundless Anaximander?
Anaximander introduced the apeiron (the boundless) as the beginning of everything (the first principle). According to his theory, the apeiron is undefined and ever moving. It gives birth to the contradictory terms of warm and cold, and of moist and dry, and their perpetual strife.
What did Aristotle say about Thales?
It was Aristotle’s opinion that Thales may have observed, ‘that the nurture of all creatures is moist, and that warmth itself is generated from moisture and lives by it; and that from which all things come to be is their first principle’ (Metaph. 983 b23-25).
