Anaximenes

Introduction

Anaximenes (c. 585 – 525 B.C.) was an early Pre-Socraticphilosopher from the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia(modern-day Turkey). He was a key figure in the Milesian School, a friend and pupil of Anaximander and he continued the Milesians‘ philosophical inquiries into the “archê” or first principle of the universe (which Anaximenes deemed to be air), and sought to give a quasi-scientific explanation of the world.

In the physical sciences, Anaximenes was the first Greek to distinguish clearly between planets and stars, and he used his principles to account for various natural phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, rainbows, earthquakes, etc.

Life

Nothing is known of his life of Anaximenes (pronounced an-ax-IM-en-ees), other than that he was the son of Eurystratos of Miletus, and was the pupil or companion of Anaximander. Some say that he was also a pupil of Parmenides of Elea, although this seems unlikely. He lived for at least part of his life under Persian rule, and so he may have witnessed the Ionian rebellion against Greek occupation. There is some evidence from letters that he was in communication with Pythagoras, although any influence on Pythagoras‘ philosophical development was probably minor (other than the desire to explain the world in non-mythological terms).

Work

According to Diogenes Laërtius (a biographer of the Greek philosophers, who lived in the 2nd or 3rd Century A.D.), Anaximenes wrote his philosophical views in a book, which survived well into the Hellenistic period, although nothing now remains of this.

Like the other Milesian philosophers before him, Anaximenes’ main concern was to identify the single source of all things in the universe (Monism). Thales, the earliest Milesian, had taken this to be water. His pupil Anaximander refined this somewhat, arguing that no single element could adequately explain all of the opposites found in nature, and propounded the solution of an endless, unlimited primordial masswhich he called “apeiron”.

Anaximenes arguably took a step backwards by revisiting the notion that a single element was indeed the source of all things, and that element he deemed to be air(actually the Greek word “aer” also denotes “mist” or “vapour” as well as the normal air we breathe). He held that, at one time, everything was air, and that, even now, everything is air at different degrees of density. Since air is infinite and perpetually in motion, it can produce all things without being actually produced by anything.

Under the influence of heat (which expands it) and of cold (which contracts it), and the associated processes of rarefaction (air separating) and condensation (air coming together), air gradually gives rise to the several phases of existence and all the materials of the organized world. Anaximenes believed that air came in threadswhich came together by a process called “felting”, analogous to the process by which wool is compressed to make felt. Thus, very close air was a solid, less close a liquid, etc.

In this way, therefore, Anaximenes used natural processes familiar from everyday experience to account for material change and, in this respect at least, his theory was an advance over those of Thales and Anaximander.

According to Anaximenes, the earth is a broad disk, floating on the circumambient air. The sun and stars, he held, were formed by the same processes of condensation and rarefaction, and the flaming nature of these bodies is merely due to the velocity of their motions. He also used his principles to account for various natural phenomena: thunder and lightning result from wind breaking out of clouds; rainbows are the result of the rays of the sun falling on clouds; earthquakesare caused by the cracking of the earth when it dries out after being moistened by rains; hail is a result of frozen rainwater; etc.

Anaximenes also equated the first material principle with the divine, so that effectively “air is God”, both being infinite and eternal. Thus, the pantheon of Greek gods were merely derivations of the truly divine, air. Similarly, the souls of individuals were also composed of air (or breath), and hold us together in the same way as air encompasses the entire world.

Anaximenes was a Pre-Socratic Greek Philosopher, who ranked among the pioneers of the Milesian School, whose innovative philosophies have made major contributions to the Milesians’ philosophical inquest into the “arche” or first principle of the universe, which according to Anaximenes, was the air. Anaximenes was the first Greek philosopher to form a clear distinction between planets and stars, and to provide scientific explanations to account for natural events such as thunder, lightning, rainbows, earthquakes etc.

Anaximenes was born in 585 BC to Eurystratos in Greek city of Miletus, located in Ionia. Anaximenes was a pupil and companion of Anaximander, however, some say that he was also a pupil of Parmenides of Elea. He spent a brief period of his life under Persian rule, therefore, he was a witness to the horrors of the Ionian rebellion against Greek occupation.

Anaximenes’ devoted his philosophical energies to the intellectual pursuit of identifying the single source of the basis of the universe. Anaximenes was confident that indeed there was a single element that controlled the course of the universe, and he deemed that element to be air. He proposed that everything is air at different levels of density, air’s characteristic of infinity and perpetual motion lends it the ability to produce all things without being produced by anything.

Anaximenes described the earth as a broad disk, floating on the circumambient air. He believed that the formation of the sun and stars was also due to the processes of condensation and rarefaction, and these bodies developed their flaming characteristics due to the velocity of their motions. He used a similar explanation for the natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning, which he described as a result of wind breaking out of clouds, he described rainbows as the result of the rays of the sun falling on clouds, earthquakes result due to the cracking of the earth when it dries out after being moistened by rain, hail is caused by frozen rainwater etc.

Life and Work

Anaximenes (fl. c.545 BC) was a discipline of Anaximander. He is the third and the last of the Milesian philosophers. Only a few sources survive for his life and activities. He wrote a book in prose probably within the same framework of natural philosophy as that of Anaximander. Anaximenes speculated on cosmology, cosmogony and meteorology.

The Air

For Anaximenes, in contrast to Anaximander, the source of all things is not an indefinite and unlimited apeiron but the air (aer): a definite material substance. The air by the process of ‘rarefaction’ becomes fire and by the process of ‘condensation’ becomes water and earth. Hot and cold do not have an ontological or material status but they are due to rarefaction and condensation. For Anaximenes the earth is flat and rides on a cushion of air. A heavenly firmament revolves like a felt cap around it. The heavenly bodies were made by rarefaction into fire, they are also flat and rest on air.

The Soul

For Anaximenes, the air is divine and causes life. It is also the source of life which encloses the cosmos as well as the first principle that is responsible for the maintenance of all living organisms. The air is the divine psychic principle between microcosm and macrocosm. As the soul (air) of an individual organism maintains the single individual organism, so the soul of the cosmos (universal breath) surrounds and maintains the whole universe. Hence Anaximenes’ cosmos is conceived as a huge animate being with divine origins.

Fragments and Testimonies

1 (A5 from Theophrastus) Anaximenes, Anaximander’s colleague, said, as he did, that there was one underlying nature, but not, as he did, that it was limitless but limited, naming it as air; and by thinning and thickening it makes individual objects different.

2(2) As our soul, which is air, maintains us, so breath and air surround the whole world.

3(2a) The sun is broad and flat, like a leaf.

Anaximenes’ Theory of Air

As mentioned, Anaximenes believed air was the arche, meaning that air is an eternal, original substance from which the physical universe was formed. We may ask, ‘But why air?’ Well, Anaximenes used scientific reasoning to observe that living things needed to breathe air in order to survive. Therefore, Anaximenes concluded that air must be the original source of life and all physical things.

According to Anaximenes, air became other physical things by altering its state and texture through a process called rarefaction or condensation. By rarefaction, Anaximenes meant that air would become thinner; the most rarefied alteration of air would be fire. By condensation, Anaximenes meant that air would become more concentrated, becoming water and then eventually solid materials like stone. It’s not exactly clear how this process occurred, but we know that Anaximenes thought air was constantly in motion, and somehow this motion resulted in rarefaction or condensation.

Anaximenes’ Theories of the Universe

Anaximenes interpreted the workings of the universe through his theory about air. Anaximenes didn’t completely reject mythology as some later Greek philosophers did, but his theories about the formation and the mechanism of the universe relied on science and philosophy instead of mythology. For example, he argued that gods and goddesses were not the creators of everything; instead, they were created from and by air, just like everything else.

Anaximenes of Miletus (c 546 BCE) was a younger contemporary of Anaximander and generally regarded as his student. Known as the Third Philosopher of the Milesian School (after Thales and Anaximander) Anaximenes proposed air as the First Cause from which all else comes (differing from Thales, who claimed water was the source of all things, or Anaximander, who cited ‘the boundless infinite’). To the Greeks of the time, `air’ was comparable to `soul’ and, just as one’s breath gave an individual life, so air, Anaximenes claimed, gave life to all observable phenomena. He explained the process by which the First Cause creates the observable world in this way:

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)

To Anaximenes, everything was in a constant state of change owing to the property of air and how it is always in flux. The world itself, he claimed, was created by air through a process he compared to the process of felting, by which wool is compressed to create felt. In this same way was the earth created through compression of air which, through a process of evaporation, gave birth to the stars and the planets. All of life came from this same sort of process, of air being compacted to change itself, or another, into a different thing.

In this way, Anaximenes provided a basis for rational discourse and debate on his claim and laid the groundwork for future scientific inquiry into the nature of existence. His influence is far reaching.

Anaximenes’ theory 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). Anaximenes’ 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 Breathsuses air as the central concept in a theory of diseases. By providing  cosmological accounts with a theory of change, Anaximenes separated them from the  realm of mere speculation and made them, at least in conception, scientific theories  capable of testing. (Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Like Thales and Anaximander before him, Anaximenes sought an underlying reason for existence and natural phenomena without appealing to the tradition of supernatural deities as the First Cause. Even though, like the other Milesians, he is never quoted as teaching atheism, there is nothing theistic in any of the extant fragments of his writings nor in any of the references to him by ancient writers.  According to Diogenes Laertius, Anaximenes “wrote in the pure unmixed Ionian dialect. And he lived, according to the statements of Apollodorus, in the sixty-third Olympiad, and died about the time of the taking of Sardis” His influence is especially noticeable in the philosophy of the later writer Heraclitus, as noted above, who developed the concept of Flux as a First Cause in and of itself.

Anaximenes (in Greek: Άναξιμένης) of Miletus (c. 585 – 528 B.C.E.) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, the third of the philosophers of Ionia (the first being Thales and the second Anaximander). He was a citizen of Miletus and a student of Anaximander.

Thales, the first philosopher of Ionia, conceived the original being of all beings to be “water,” based upon his philosophy of life. Anaximander, a student of Thales, heightened the level of abstraction and identified the original being not with an element in the world, such as “water,” but with the “indefinite” or “unbounded.” Anaximenes, a student of Anaximander, conceived the original being to be “air,” the extension of an element of the world.

Aristotle interpreted all these Ionian thinkers, within the framework of his ontology of form and matter, as predecessors who inquired into the material cause of being.

Anaximenes conceived “air” as an extension of breath, which implies a type of philosophy of life. The wonder and mystery of life shaped his thoughts, and his primary concept of being was taken from living beings. The concept of “air” should not be interpreted to be purely material air in a modern sense. One may find some affinity between Anaximenes’ “air” and “qi” (氣) in Chinese thought. Furthermore, one may find an intrinsic connection between Anaximenes’ “air” and the original concept of “ruach” found in the ancient pre-Babylonian Exile Hebraic tradition. The one remaining passage in Aetius’ Historiography reads:

As our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so does wind (or breath) and air enclose the whole world. (Diels and Kranz 13B2)

Like “water” in Thales and the “indefinite” in Anaximander, “air” in Anaximenes is also divine and imperishable. The origin of beings was conceived to be one and eternal for these pioneers of Western philosophy.

Some regard Anaximander as the peak of Ionian philosophy due to his high level of abstraction and Anaximenes as a recession from it, since Anaximenes conceived the origin of being to be the extension of an element of the world as Thales had.

Every being is, in essence, air at different degrees of density, and under the influence of heat, which expands, and of cold, which contracts its volume, it gives rise to the several phases of existence. The process is gradual, and takes place in two directions, as heat or cold predominates. In this way was formed a broad disc called earth, floating on the circumambient air. Similar condensations produced the sun and stars; and the flaming state of these bodies is due to the velocity of their motions.

Some scientific discoveries are also ascribed to Anaximenes: that rainbows are created as light shines through condensed air (mist), how the moon reflects sunlight, and others.

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