Anaxagoras, (born c.

500 BCE, Clazomenae, Anatolia [now in Turkey]

died c. 428, Lampsacus), Greek philosopher of nature remembered for
his cosmology and for his discovery of the true cause of eclipses. He was
associated with the Athenian statesman Pericles.
About 480 Anaxagoras moved to Athens, then becoming the centre of Greek
culture, and brought from Ionia the new practice of philosophy and the spirit of
scientific inquiry. After 30 years residence in Athens, he was prosecuted on a
charge of impiety for asserting that the Sun is an incandescent stone somewhat
larger than the region of the Peloponnese. The attack on him was intended as an
indirect blow at Pericles, and, although Pericles managed to save him,
Anaxagoras was compelled to leave Athens. He spent his last years in retirement
at Lampsacus.
Only a few fragments of Anaxagorass writings have been preserved, and
several different interpretations of his work have been made. The basic features,
however, are clear. His cosmologygrows out of the efforts of earlier Greek
thinkers who had tried to explain the physical universe by an assumption of a
single fundamental element. Parmenides, however, asserted that such an
assumption could not account for movement and change, and,
whereas Empedocles sought to resolve this difficulty by positing four basic
ingredients, Anaxagoras posited an infinite number. Unlike his predecessors, who
had chosen such elements as heat or water as the basic substance, Anaxagoras
included those found in living bodies, such as flesh, bone, bark, and leaf.
Otherwise, he asked, how could flesh come from what is not flesh? He also
accounted for biological changes, in which substances appear under new
manifestations: as men eat and drink, flesh, bone, and hair grow. In order to
explain the great amount and diversity of change, he said that there is a portion
of everything, i.e., of every elemental stuff, in everything, but each is and was
most manifestly those things of which there is most in it.
The most original aspect of Anaxagorass system was his doctrine
of nous (mind or reason). The cosmos was formed by mind in two stages:
first, by a revolving and mixing process that still continues; and, second, by the
development of living things. In the first, all of the dark came together to form
the night, the fluid came together to form the oceans, and so on with other
elements. The same process of attraction of like to like occurred in the second
stage, when flesh and other elements were brought together by mind in large
amounts. This stage took place by means of animal and plant seeds inherent in
the original mixture. The growth of living things, according to Anaxagoras,
depends on the power of mind within the organisms that enables them to extract
nourishment from surrounding substances. For this concept of mind, Anaxagoras
was commended by Aristotle. Both Plato and Aristotle, however, objected that his
notion of mind did not include a view that mind acts ethicallyi.e., acts for the
best interests of the universe.


Candido
Zarah Joi G.
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Anaxagoras