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Anaximenes was the third Greek philosopher in canonical lists of
successions, and like his predecessors Thales and Anaximander,
an inhabitant of Miletus. According to the very meager sources on
his life he flourished in the mid 6th century BCE and died around
528. He was said to be the student of Anaximander,
and like him he sought to give a quasi-scientific explanation of the
world.
He is best known for his doctrine that air is the source of all
things. This claim contrasts with the view of Thales that
water was the source, and with the view of Anaximander
that all things came from an unspecified boundless stuff. He seems
to have held that at one time everything was air. In one region the
air was acted upon by natural forces to be transformed into other
materials which came together into an organized world, in which we
now live. Air can be thought of as a kind of neutral stuff that is
found everywhere, and is hence available to participate in physical
processes. It is also associated with the soul-sometimes portrayed
as the breath of life in early Greek literature-and hence with life
and intelligence. Anaximenes may have thought of air as capable of
directing its own development to some extent as our soul controls our
body (DK13B2 in
the Diels-Kranz
collection of Presocratic sources). Accordingly, he ascribed to
air divine attributes.
Anaximenes provides an interesting account of natural change:
[Air] differs in essence in accordance with its rarity or density.
When it is thinned it becomes fire, while when it is condensed it
becomes wind, then cloud, when still more condensed it becomes water,
then earth, then stones. Everything else comes from these. (DK13A5)
Using two contrary processes of rarefaction and condensation,
Anaximenes explains how air is part of a series of changes from fire
to air to wind to cloud to water to earth to stones. Matter can
travel this path by being condensed, or the reverse path from stones
to fire by being successively more rarefied. Anaximenes provides a
crude kind of empirical support by appealing to a simple experiment:
if one blows on one's hand with the mouth relaxed, the air is hot; if
one blows with pursed lips, the air is cold (DK13B1).
Hence, we allegedly see that rarity is correlated with heat, as in
fire, density with coldness, as in the denser stuffs. Anaximenes is
the first thinker we know of who provides a theory of change and
bolsters it with observations. Anaximander
had described a sequence of changes that a portion of the boundless
underwent to form the different stuffs of the world. But he gave no
scientific reason for its changing, nor did he describe any mechanism
by which it might come about. By contrast, Anaximenes uses a process
familiar from everyday experience to account for material change. He
also seems to have referred to the process of felting, by which wool
is compressed to make felt. This industrial process provides a model
of how one stuff can take on new properties when it is compacted.
Anaximenes, like Anaximander,
gives an account of how our world came to be out of previously
existing matter. According to Anaximenes earth was formed from air
by a felting process. It is a flat disk. From evaporations from the
earth fiery bodies arise which come to be the heavenly bodies. The
earth floats on a cushion of air. The heavenly bodies, or at least
the sun and the moon, seem also be flat bodies that float on streams
of air. On one account the heaven is like a felt cap that turns
around the head. The stars may be fixed to this surface like nails.
In another account the stars are like fiery leaves floating on air
(DK13A14).
The sun does not travel under the earth but circles around it, and is
hidden by the higher parts of the earth at night.
Like Anaximander,
Anaximenes uses his principles to account for various natural
phenomena. Lightning and thunder result from wind breaking out of
clouds; rainbows are the result of the rays of the sun falling on
clouds; earthquakes are caused by the cracking of the earth when it
dries out after being moistened by rains. He gives an essentially
correct account of hail as frozen rainwater.
Most commentators, following Aristotle,
understand Anaximenes' theory of change as presupposing Material
Monism. According to this theory there is only one substance, in
this case air, from which the whole world and everything in it are
composed. The several stuffs: wind, cloud, water, etc., are only
modifications of the real substance that is always and everywhere
present. There is no independent evidence to support this
interpretation, which seems to require metaphysical concepts of form
and matter, substratum and accident that are too advanced for this
period. Anaximenes may have supposed that the stuffs simply change
into one another in order.
Anaximenes' notion of successive change of matter by rarefaction and
condensation was influential in later theories. It is developed by
Heraclitus
(DK22B31)
and criticized by Parmenides
(DK28B8.23-24,
47-48). His general theory of how the materials of the world arise
is adopted by Anaxagoras
(DK59B16),
even though the latter has a very different theory of matter. Both
Melissus (DK30B8.3)
and Plato (Timaeus 49b-c) see Anaximenes' theory as providing
a common-sense explanation of change. Diogenes of Apollonia makes
air the basis of his explicitly monistic theory. The Hippocratic
treatise On Breaths uses air as the central concept in a
theory of diseases. By providing cosmological accounts with a theory
of change Anaximenes removed them from the realm of mere speculation
and made them, at least in conception, scientific theories capable of
testing.
Suggestions for Further Reading
There are no monographs on Anaximenes in English. Articles on him
are sometimes rather specialized in nature. A number of chapters in
books on the Presocratics are helpful.
Barnes, Jonathan. The Presocratic Philosophers. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul (1 vol. edn.), 1982. Ch. 3.
Gives a philosophically rich defense of the standard
interpretation of Anaximenes.
Bicknell, P. J. "Anaximenes' Astronomy." Acta Classica 12: 53-85.
An interesting reconstruction of the conflicting reports on
Anaximenes' astronomy.
Classen, C. Joachim. "Anaximander
and Anaximenes: The Earliest Greek Theories of Change?"
Phronesis 22: 89-102.
This article provides a good assessment of one of Anaximenes'
major contributions.
Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. 1.
Cambridge: Cambridge U. Pr., 1962. 115-40.
A good introduction to Anaximenes' thought.
Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven and M. Schofield. The Presocratic
Philosophers. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Ch. 4.
A careful analysis of the texts of Anaximenes.
Wöhrle, Georg. Anaximenes aus Milet. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag, 1993.
This brief edition adds four new testimonies to the evidence
about Anaximenes and challenges the standard interpretation. It is
useful as a counterbalance to the received view, though I think
particular criticisms it makes of that view are wrong.
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