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Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624–262 BCE

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Anaximander

Pre-SocraticMilesian

Born c. 610 BCE, Miletus

Died c. 546 BCE, Miletus

Thales asked what the world is made of. Anaximander answered: nothing you can name. The origin is the boundless.

A younger associate of Thales, Anaximander refused to ground the world in any single element. Water, air, fire are all limited, and what limits cannot be the source of everything. So he proposed the apeiron, the boundless, an indefinite stuff from which all opposites separate out and into which they return. He drew the first map of the known world, built a sundial, and argued that the earth floats unsupported at the center of things, held by nothing because it has no reason to fall one way rather than another. He even guessed that humans must have descended from other animals, since a human infant could never have survived alone.

Places

Ideas

NatureBeingChange

Words

“From what things existing things come to be, into these they pass away according to necessity; for they pay the penalty to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.”

— Anaximander

Works

On Nature

fragmentary
·Greek

The lost prose treatise, possibly the first in the Greek tradition, in which Anaximander set out the boundless as the origin of all things and described a cosmos governed by necessity. Only a single sentence survives, quoted by later writers.

Life & Moments

c. 610 BCE

Born in Miletus

Born in the Ionian city of Miletus, a younger associate of Thales in the first circle of philosophers.

c. 560 BCE

The First Map of the World

Drew the first known map of the inhabited world and a model of the heavens, treating the cosmos as something that could be charted and reasoned about.

Influence

Influenced by

  • ←
    Thalesteacher and successor

    Anaximander was the associate and successor of Thales at Miletus, and carried his question about the origin of things in a bolder direction.

Influenced

  • →
    Anaximenesteacher and student

    Anaximenes was the pupil of Anaximander and the third of the Milesian thinkers.

Related Thinkers

A

Anaximenes

c. 586 BCE – c. 526 BCE

Thales

c. 624 BCE – c. 546 BCE

Read the Journey →Compare with Anaximenes

Thinkers

A story-first philosophy atlas. Explore history's greatest thinkers through place, time, movement, and ideas.

Explore

  • Thinkers
  • Atlas
  • Works

Browse

  • Concepts
  • Volumes

About

  • About Thinkers
  • Image Credits

Volume I · Ancient Greece · 624–262 BCE