(? -- 499 B.C.E.[= the destruction of Miletus])
OUTLINE:
1) Fills out the notion of injustice with a notion of the process of rarefication/condensation
2) Appeals to experience in an explicit way to support his theory:
The example of the breath (reported by Plutarch): chilled through compression by the lips, warmed through rarety. First recorded Greek use of a detailed observation to support a physical theory -- but this is not strictly an "experiment."
3) The "form of theory" becomes articulate here. As stated by his follower Diogenes of Apollonia,
unless all things derive from one stuff, then things could have no subsequent connection or interaction with one another. [--> mythopoetical structure of explanation: things relate in virtue of their common origin.]
4) Analogy between soul // air:
As our soul, he says, being air, holds us together and controls us,-- so the wind [ or breath] and air enclose the whole world.
--> Origin of analogy between man // world
microcosm // macrocosm
--> Pythagoreans
5) Anaximenes theory includes aer as the source of the gods themselves. This:
a) makes explicit the anti-mythic character of such explanations;b) points towards the critiques of popular religion we will find in Heraclitus and Xenophanes.
6) W. T. Jones' interpretation: we have here the insight that quantitative changes can account for qualitative changes.
[This interpretation, if correct, is important: but this same insight is implicit in the mathematical conception of Anaximander.]
[For additional PreSocratic views on mathematics, follow .]
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A pupil of Anaximander, also from Miletus
Adds two new concepts:
1) provides a concrete indication of what the source of things is: air, which he relates to respiration.(In some sense, a return to Thales -- or a synthesis, in that Anaximenes points to a substance which might be understood to be more subtle, less defined than water?)
2) an explanation of how things are made from the primal substance; things are formed by condensation and rarefication
--> issues in hot/cold opposites;
rarefied air is fire;
when air is more condensed, it becomes cloud, water, land, rocks, depending on the degree of density.
"An observable means of change in which quantity determines quality."
"To the first substance, which supports the changing variety of things, is added a source of motion."
aer -- in Homer, "mist," something visible, obscuring --> atmospheric air in Anaximenes.
wind (or breath) and air (pneuma kai aer) surround all things -- related to soul (psyche).
Air might seem to possess some of the indefinite qualities of Anaximander's originate stuff -- and it has no obvious opposite.
[The main issue with the Milesians seems to be a device for explaining diversity -- not necessarily for explaining every kind of natural substance.]
aer is divine -- the source of the gods themselves (reported in Cicero; Aetius; Augustinus -- K&R 150)
COSMOGONY:
Apparently imposed by Hippolytus onto A. from Xenophanes, Anaxagoras
COSMOLOGY:
The earth rides on air, is flat. The surrounding air is unbounded. Compared to leaves floating on air [--> 19th ct. notion of the aether].
Likewise, the heavenly bodies, like the earth, float on air -- their movement perhaps caused by wind.
[attribution of "earthy" bodies around the fiery aer a projection from a later period -- Diogenes of Apollonia, his follower.]
Nothing passes under the earth -- bodies circle around like a cap revolving. The earth is higher in the north, hence blotting out the sun. (Not a tilting.)
See Kirk and Raven, 157 for theory of clouds, rain
Analogy between soul // air:
"As our soul, he says, being air, holds us together and controls us -- so does wind [or breath] and air enclose the whole world."
[Probably a direct quotation from Anaximenes.
HOMER distinguished between breath (pneuma) as the life-soul associated with breath, and the sensory/intellectual soul called thumos.
In any case, THE FIRST PRESOCRATIC PSYCHOLOGICAL STATEMENT.
More importantly, this reveals an important motive for his choice of aer as the original substance.
As well, the analogy rests on the assumption -- implicit in Anaximenes' notion of justice applying to the world -- that humankind and the outside world are made of the same material andbehave according to similar rules.
"The end of the Milesian, cosmogonical approach -- the issue being to name a single kind of material from which the whole differentiated world could have grown."
New problems to come -- of theology, the unity of arrangement.