flourished in the mid 6th century BCE and died around 528. He is the
third philosopher of the Milesian School of philosophy, so named
because like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes was an inhabitant of
Miletus, in Ionia (ancient Greece). Theophrastus notes that Anaximenes
was an associate, and possibly a student, of Anaximander's.
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.
1. Doctrine of Air
Anaximenes seems to have held that at one time everything was air. Air
can be thought of as a kind of neutral stuff that is found everywhere,
and is available to participate in physical processes. Natural forces
constantly act on the air and transform it into other materials, which
came together to form the organized world. In early Greek literature,
air is associated with the soul (the breath of life) and Anaximenes
may have thought of air as capable of directing its own development,
as the soul controls the body (DK13B2 in the Diels-Kranz collection of
Presocratic sources). Accordingly, he ascribed to air divine
attributes.
2. Doctrine of Change
Given his doctrine that all things are composed of air, Anaximenes
suggested an interesting qualitative 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. Fire turns
to air, air to wind, wind to cloud, cloud to water, water to earth and
earth to stone. 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, according to Anaximenes we see that rarity is
correlated with heat (as in fire), and density with coldness, (as in
the denser stuffs).
Anaximenes was the first recorded thinker who provided a theory of
change and supported it with observation. 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 changes, nor did he describe any mechanism by which they 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.
3. Origin of the Cosmos
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 began as a flat
disk. From evaporations from the earth, fiery bodies arose which came
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 heavens are
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 all
existing things 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 Aristotle's 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.
4. Influence on later Philosophy
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 Breaths
uses 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.
5. References and 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.
o Gives a philosophically rich defense of the standard
interpretation of Anaximenes.
* Bicknell, P. J. "Anaximenes' Astronomy." Acta Classica 12: 53-85.
o 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.
o 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.
o 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.
o A careful analysis of the texts of Anaximenes.
* Wöhrle, Georg. Anaximenes aus Milet. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner
Verlag, 1993.
o 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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