Mind orders the cosmos. He brought philosophy to Athens and was exiled for saying the sun is a hot rock, not a god.
Anaxagoras came from Ionia to Athens and became the first philosopher to live and teach there. He proposed that an infinite number of seeds make up all things, and that Nous (Mind) set the cosmos in motion. He was a friend of Pericles. The Athenians put him on trial for impiety because he taught that the sun is a mass of burning metal, not a deity. He was convicted and exiled. He spent his last years in Lampsacus.
“All things were together. Then Mind came and arranged them in order.”
“The sun is a hot stone, larger than the Peloponnese.”
Arrived in Athens from Ionia and became the first philosopher to teach there. He was a close associate of Pericles.
Charged with impiety for claiming the sun is a hot rock, not a god. Convicted and exiled from Athens. Pericles could not save him.
Anaxagoras inherited the Milesian project of explaining the whole cosmos from a single material starting point.