Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras (/ˌænækˈsæɡərəs/; Greek: Ἀναξαγόρας, Anaxagóras, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 – c. 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. According to Diogenes Laërtius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles, if they were not fabricated by later ancient biographers.

Anaxagoras (1636) by Jusepe de Ribera
For other uses, see Anaxagoras (disambiguation).
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras; part of a fresco in the portico of the National University of Athens.
Bornc. 500 BC
Clazomenae, Ionia, Persian Empire
(now Urla, İzmir, Turkey)
Diedc. 428 BC
Lampsacus
(now Lapseki, Çanakkale, Turkey)
EraAncient philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
SchoolIonian school
Main interests
Natural philosophy
Notable ideas
Nous, or Mind ordering all things

Responding to the claims of Parmenides on the impossibility of change, Anaxagoras introduced the concept of Nous (Cosmic Mind) as an ordering force. He also gave several novel scientific accounts of natural phenomena, including the notion of panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and could be distributed everywhere. He deduced a correct explanation for eclipses and described the Sun as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese, as well as attempting to explain rainbows and meteors.

Biography

Anaxagoras was born in the town of Clazomenae in the early 5th century BCE,[1] where he may have been born into an aristocratic family.[2][1] He arrived at Athens, either shortly after the Persian war (in which he may have fought on the Persian side),[3] or at some point when he was a bit older, around 456 BCE.[1] While at Athens, he became close with the Athenian statesman Pericles.[1] According to Diogenes, Laërtius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles, if they were not fabricated by later ancient biographers.[4] According to Laërtius, Pericles spoke in defense of Anaxagoras at his trial[lower-alpha 1], c. 450. Even so, Anaxagoras was forced to retire from Athens to Lampsacus in Troad (c. 434 – 433). He died there around the year 428. Citizens of Lampsacus erected an altar to Mind and Truth in his memory and observed the anniversary of his death for many years. They placed over his grave the following inscription:

Here Anaxagoras, who in his quest of truth scaled heaven itself, is laid to rest.[lower-alpha 2][lower-alpha 3]

Philosophy

Responding to the claims of Parmenides on the impossibility of change, Anaxagoras described the world as a mixture of primary imperishable ingredients, where material variation was never caused by an absolute presence of a particular ingredient, but rather by its relative preponderance over the other ingredients; in his words, "each one is... most manifestly those things of which there are the most in it".[5] He introduced the concept of Nous (Cosmic Mind) as an ordering force, which moved and separated the original mixture, which was homogeneous or nearly so.

Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens. According to Anaxagoras, all things have existed in some way from the beginning, but originally they existed in infinitesimally small fragments of themselves, endless in number and inextricably combined throughout the universe. All things existed in this mass but in a confused and indistinguishable form.[6] There was an infinite number of homogeneous parts (ὁμοιομερῆ) as well as heterogeneous ones.[6][7]

The work of arrangement, the segregation of like from unlike, and the summation of the whole into totals of the same name, was the work of Mind or Reason (νοῦς). Mind is no less unlimited than the chaotic mass, but it stood pure and independent, a thing of finer texture, alike in all its manifestations and everywhere the same. This subtle agent, possessed of all knowledge and power, is especially seen ruling all life forms.[lower-alpha 4] Its first appearance, and the only manifestation of it which Anaxagoras describes, is Motion. It gave distinctness and reality to the aggregates of like parts. [6]

Decrease and growth represent a new aggregation (σὐγκρισις) and disruption (διάκρισις). However, the original intermixture of things is never wholly overcome.[6] Each thing contains parts of other things or heterogeneous elements, and is what it is only on account of the preponderance of certain homogeneous parts which constitute its character.[8] Out of this process arise the things we see in this world.[8]

Astronomy

Plutarch[lower-alpha 5] says "Anaxagoras is said to have predicted that if the heavenly bodies should be loosened by some slip or shake, one of them might be torn away, and might plunge and fall to earth."

His observations of the celestial bodies and the fall of meteorites led him to form new theories of the universal order, and to the prediction of the impact of meteorites. According to Pliny[lower-alpha 6], he was credited with predicting the fall of the meteorite in 467.[9] He was the first to give a correct explanation of eclipses, and was both famous and notorious for his scientific theories, including the claims that the Sun is a mass of red-hot metal, that the Moon is earthy, and that the stars are fiery stones.[lower-alpha 7] He thought that the Earth was flat and floated supported by 'strong' air under it, and that disturbances in this air sometimes caused earthquakes.[lower-alpha 8] He introduced the notion of panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and could be distributed everywhere.[10][11]

He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the Sun, which he described as a mass of blazing metal, larger than the Peloponnese; he also said that the Moon had mountains, and he believed that it was inhabited. The heavenly bodies, he asserted, were masses of stone torn from the Earth and ignited by rapid rotation.[6] His theories about eclipses, the Sun, and Moon may well have been based on observations of the eclipse of 463 BCE[lower-alpha 9], which was visible in Greece.

Mathematics

According to Plutarch in his work On exile, Anaxagoras is the first Greek to attempt the problem of squaring the circle, a problem he worked on while in prison.[lower-alpha 10]

Legacy

Anaxagoras wrote a book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have survived, through preservation in the work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the 6th century AD.[lower-alpha 11]

Anaxagoras' book was reportedly available for a drachma in the Athenian marketplace.[1] It was certainly known to Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, based on the contents of their surviving plays,[1] and possibly to Aeschylus as well, based on the testimony of Seneca.[1] However, although Anaxagoras almost certainly lived in Athens during the lifetime of Socrates (born 470 BCE), there is no evidence that they ever met. In the Phaedo, Plato portrays Socrates saying of Anaxagoras as a young man: 'I eagerly acquired his books and read them as quickly as I could'. However, Socrates goes on to describe his later disillusionment with his philosophy.[lower-alpha 12] Anaxagoras is also mentioned by Socrates during his trial in Plato's Apology.

He is also mentioned in Seneca's Natural Questions (Book 4B, originally Book 3: On Clouds, Hail, Snow). It reads: "Why should I too allow myself the same liberty as Anaxagoras allowed himself?"

The Roman author Valerius Maximus preserves a different tradition; Anaxagoras, coming home from a long voyage, found his property in ruin, and said: "If this had not perished, I would have"—a sentence described by Valerius as being "possessed of sought-after wisdom".[12][lower-alpha 13]

Dante Alighieri places Anaxagoras in the First Circle of Hell (Limbo) in his Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto IV, line 137).

Chapter 5 in Book II of De Docta Ignorantia (1440) by Nicholas of Cusa is dedicated to the truth of the sentence "Each thing is in each thing" which he attributes to Anaxagoras.

Anaxagoras appears as a character in the second Act of Faust, Part II by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

See also

Notes

Footnotes
  1. Laertius 2.15
  2. Ancient Greek: ἐνθάδε, πλεῖστον ἀληθείας ἐπὶ τέρμα περήσας οὐρανίου κόσμου, κεῖται Ἀναξαγόρας.
  3. Laertius 2.15
  4. B12
  5. Life of Lysander 12.1
  6. Natural History 2.149
  7. Curd
  8. Burnet
  9. "NASA - Total Solar Eclipse of -462 April 30".
  10. Plutarch, On exile
  11. Simplicius
  12. Plato, Phaedo, 85b
  13. Val. Max., VIII, 7, ext., 5: Qui, cum e diutina peregrinatione patriam repetisset possessionesque desertas vidisset, "non essem – inquit "ego salvus, nisi istae perissent." Vocem petitae sapientiae compotem!

Citations
  1. Curd 2019, 1.
  2. DK 59A1.
  3. Copleston 2003, p. 66.
  4. Filonik 2013, pp. 26–33.
  5. Curd 2011, B12.
  6. Wallace & Mitchell 1911, p. 943.
  7. Schmitz 1870.
  8. Smith 1952.
  9. Couprie 2004.
  10. Hollinger 2016.
  11. Kolb & Clark 2020, p. 47.
  12. Curd 2007.

References

Ancient testimony
Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article:
Wikisource has original text related to this article:

In the Diels-Kranz numbering for testimony and fragments of Pre-Socratic philosophy, Anaxagoras is catalogued as number 59.

The most recent edition of this catalogue is Diels, Hermann; Kranz, Walther (1957). Plamböck, Gert (ed.). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (in Ancient Greek and German). Rowohlt. ISBN 5875607416. Retrieved 11 April 2022.

Biography

Fragments
  • B1. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 155.23.
  • B2. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 155.30.
  • B3. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 164.16.
  • B4. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 34.28.
  • B5. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 156.9.
  • B6. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 164.25.
  • B7. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens. 155.23.
  • B8. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 175.11.
  • B9. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 35.13.
  • B10. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 460.16.
  • B11. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 164.22.
  • B12. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 164.24.
  • B13. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 300.27.
  • B14. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 157.5.
  • B15. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 179.3.
  • B16. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 179.6.
  • B17. Simplicius of Cilicia. Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. 163.18.
  • B18. Plutarch. On the Face Which Appears in the Orb of the Moon. Stephanus p.929b.
  • B21. Sextus Empiricus. Against the Logicians. Book I.90.
  • B21a. Sextus Empiricus. Against the Logicians. Book I.140.
  • B21b. Plutarch. On Fortune. Stephanus p.98f.

Translations of the fragments
  • Curd, Patricia, ed. (2011). A Presocratics reader: selected fragments and testimonia (Second ed.). Indianapolis. ISBN 978-1603843058.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  • Curd, Patricia, ed. (2007). Anaxagoras of Clazomenae. Fragments and Testimonia: A Text and Translation with Notes and Essays. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
  • Graham, Daniel W. (2010). The Texts of Early Greek Philosophy: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics, Part 1. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-73763-0.
  • Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 1.1–2. Bloomsbury Publishing. 7 April 2022. ISBN 978-1-350-28570-5.
  • Simplicius: On Aristotle Physics 1.3-4. A&C Black. 22 April 2014. ISBN 978-1-4725-1531-5.
  • Simplicius: On Aristotle On the Heavens 1.3-4. A&C Black. 22 April 2014. ISBN 978-1-4725-0170-7.
  • Sider, David (ed.), The Fragments of Anaxagoras, with introduction, text, and commentary, Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2005.
  • Kirk G. S.; Raven, J. E. and Schofield, M. (1983) The Presocratic Philosophers: a critical history with a selection of texts (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, ISBN 0-521-25444-2; originally authored by Kirk and Raven and published in 1957 OCLC 870519

Sources

Further reading
  • Bakalis Nikolaos (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing, Victoria, BC., ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
  • Barnes J. (1979). The Presocratic Philosophers, Routledge, London, ISBN 0-7100-8860-4, and editions of 1982, 1996 and 2006
  • Davison, J. A. (1953). "Protagoras, Democritus, and Anaxagoras". Classical Quarterly. 3 (n.s) (1–2): 33–45. doi:10.1017/s0009838800002585. S2CID 170730707.
  • Gershenson, Daniel E. and Greenberg, Daniel A. (1964) Anaxagoras and the birth of physics, Blaisdell Publishing Co., New York, OCLC 899834
  • Graham, Daniel W. (1999). "Empedocles and Anaxagoras: Responses to Parmenides" Chapter 8 of Long, A. A. (1999) The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 159–180, ISBN 0-521-44667-8
  • Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962). A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Luchte, James (2011). Early Greek Thought: Before the Dawn. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0567353313.
  • Mansfeld, J. (1979). "The Chronology of Anaxagoras' Athenian Period and the Date of His Trial". Mnemosyne. 32 (1/2): 39–69. doi:10.1163/156852579X00219. ISSN 0026-7074. JSTOR 4430850.
  • Mansfield, J. (1980). "The Chronology of Anaxagoras' Athenian Period and the Date of His Trial". Mnemosyne. 33 (1–2): 17–95. doi:10.1163/156852580X00271.
  • Sandywell, Barry (1996). Presocratic Reflexivity: The Construction of Philosophical Discourse, c. 600–450 BC. Vol. 3. London: Routledge.
  • Schofield, Malcolm (1980). An Essay on Anaxagoras. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521227223.
  • Taylor, A.E. (1917). "On the Date of the Trial of Anaxagoras". Classical Quarterly. 11 (2): 81–87. doi:10.1017/S0009838800013094. S2CID 170595550. Zenodo: 1428584.
  • Taylor, C. C. W. (ed.) (1997). Routledge History of Philosophy: From the Beginning to Plato, Vol. I, pp. 192–225, ISBN 0-415-06272-1
  • Teodorsson, Sven-Tage (1982). Anaxagoras' Theory of Matter. Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, Göteborg, Sweden, ISBN 91-7346-111-3
  • Torrijos-Castrillejo, David (2014) Anaxágoras y su recepción en Aristóteles. Romae: EDUSC, ISBN 978-88-8333-325-5 (in Spanish)
  • Warren, James (2007). "Anaxagoras". Presocratics. Stocksfield: Acumen. pp. 119–134. ISBN 9781844653911.
  • Wright, M.R. (1995). Cosmology in Antiquity. London: Routledge.
  • Zeller, A. (1881). A History of Greek Philosophy: From the Earliest Period to the Time of Socrates, Vol. II, translated by S. F. Alleyne, pp. 321–394
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