Anaxagoras
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Anaxagoras
Bibliography
See D. E. Gershenson and D. A. Greenberg, Anaxagoras and the Birth of Physics (1964); M. Schofield, An Essay on Anaxagoras (1980).
Anaxagoras
Born circa 500 B.C., in Clazomenae, in Asia Minor; died circa 428 B.C. A philosopher of ancient Greece.
Anaxagoras was the first to have taught philosophy professionally in Athens. Accused of impiety, he moved to Lampsacus, where he founded a school of philosophy. With Empedocles and the atomists, he developed a natural philosophy about indestructible elements, the seeds of things (they were later called homoeomeries), which he visualized as infinite in quality and in quantity. Each element is in turn composed of an infinite number of smaller particles, the parts of which are equivalent to the whole. Applying the principle that everything is in the whole, Anaxagoras explained every destruction as the dissociation into indestructible elements and every becoming as the union of qualities dispersed over all the elements. The driving principle of the world order is nous (“mind” or “reason”), which organizes the elements. Anaxagoras was also a mathematician and astronomer and worked on problems of perspective in theatrical scenic designing.
WORKS
[Fragments], in A. Makovel’skii. Dosokratiki, part 3. Kazan, 1919. Pages 104–61.[Fragments], in Antichnye filosofy [evidences, fragments, and texts]. Kazan, 1955.
Diels, H. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. . . , 5th ed., vol. 2. Berlin, 1935. Pages 5–44.
REFERENCES
Asmus, V. F. lstoriia antichnoi filosofii. Moscow, 1965. Pages 59–79.Cleve, F. M. The Philosophy of Anaxagoras. New York, 1949.
A. F. LOSEV