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Updated: June 24, 2025
To the former class belong Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, and others that attempted to discover some principle for the explanation of the natural phenomena. To accomplish this end, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, etc., were resorted to.
As to the discovery of the obliquity of the ecliptic by the aid of a gnomon attributed to Anaximenes, it was merely a boast of his vainglorious countrymen, and altogether beyond the scientific grasp of one who had no more exact idea of the nature of the earth than that it was "like a broad leaf floating in the air."
He had a great and inquiring mind, but he was a pagan, with no knowledge of a spiritual and controlling and personal deity. Anaximenes, his disciple, pursued his inquiries, and adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is unknown, probably B.C. 529. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of matter.
XI. Anaxagoras, who received his learning from Anaximenes, was the first who affirmed the system and disposition of all things to be contrived and perfected by the power and reason of an infinite mind; in which infinity he did not perceive that there could be no conjunction of sense and motion, nor any sense in the least degree, where nature herself could feel no impulse.
Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, saith, "With what sense can I amuse my selfe in the secrets of the Starres, having continually death or bondage before mine eyes?" For at that time the Kings of Persia were making preparations to war against his Countrie.
Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle declare that the eastern parts of the world, from whence motion commences, are of the right, those of the western are of the left hand of the world. Empedocles, that those that are of the right hand face the summer solstice, those of the left the winter solstice. Anaximenes affirms that the circumference of heaven makes the limit of the earth's revolution.
But we also see that this demand may be completely satisfied by an agency purely physical, provided it be much more familiar than that which it is invoked to explain. To Thales and Anaximenes, it appeared inconceivable that the antecedents which we see in nature, should produce the consequents; but perfectly natural that water, or air, should produce them.
Two of the Milesians, disciples of Anaximander and Anaximenes, were staying then in Egypt, to study astronomy and the peculiar wisdom of the Egyptians at Heliopolis, and the third was a wealthy merchant and ship- owner, named Theopompus, who had settled at Naukratis.
And since it is seen from the results of breathing that the air is a life-giving principle to man, nay, even is actually his soul, it would appear to be a just inference that the infinite air is God and that the gods and goddesses have sprung from it. Such was the philosophy of Anaximenes.
As to Diogenes, we learn that he was influenced by Anaximenes and Anaxagoras; in agreement with the former he regarded Air as the primary substance, and like Anaxagoras he attributed reason to his primary substance.
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