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Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras (/ˌænækˈsæɡərəs/; Greek: Ἀναξαγόρας, Anaxagóras, "lord of the assembly"; c. 500 – c. 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. According to Diogenes Laërtius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles, if they were not fabricated by later ancient biographers. [Anaxagoras (1636) by Jusepe de Ribera]

Responding to the claims of Parmenides on the impossibility of change, Anaxagoras introduced the concept of Nous (Cosmic Mind) as an ordering force. He also gave a number of novel scientific accounts of natural phenomena, including the notion of panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and could be distributed everywhere. He deduced a correct explanation for eclipses and described the Sun as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese, as well as attempting to explain rainbows and meteors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaxagoras


The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (ca. 500-ca. 428 B.C.) was the first to formulate a molecular theory of matter and to regard the physical universe as subject to the rule of rationality or reason.Anaxagoras His infinitely divisible things, infinite in number, were originally all together. How they had come together and where they had come from were questions not propounded by Anaxagoras. Thus, his universe began with a vast indiscriminate jumble or species of magma, which in the course of time was set whirling by Mind.
"The whole rotation was controlled by Mind in such a way that in the beginning there was a vortical motion. At first the turning began on a small scale, but it spins more widely and it will spin even more widely. "What is more, Anaxagoras's Mind itself was not an insubstantial, incorporeal, exclusively mental, spiritual, or divine entity. Unlike a theist, Anaxagoras described his cosmic Mind as being the "most delicate and purest of all things." Nor was Anaxagoras a dualist in the conventional sense of one who counterposes mind against matter, for he declared that "Mind even now is where all other things are too, in the surrounding plenitude as well as in the things that have been assembled and those that have been disassembled."

Created by Dale Pond. Last Modification: Saturday December 24, 2022 03:31:28 MST by Dale Pond.