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person610 BCE-546 BCE

Anaximander

Disciplines:
cosmology
metaphysics

Summary

Ancient Greek philosopher from Miletus, student of Thales, who posited the apeiron — the indefinite or boundless — as the primordial principle from which all things come and to which they return.

Core Contribution

The apeiron is the arche (primary principle): not any definite element (water, fire) but an indefinite source from which opposites emerge through eternal motion. Things pay penalty and retribution to one another for their injustice according to the order of time.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Produced the first surviving sentence of Western philosophy: things pay penalty to one another for injustice — an astonishing injection of moral language into cosmological description.
  • Drew one of the first maps of the known world and argued that the earth floats freely in space, not resting on anything.

Notable Works & Achievements

On Nature

Historical Influences

Thales

Intellectual Lineage

Milesian Cosmology

Contemporaries & Peers

Thales Anaximenes

Minds Influenced

Anaximenes Heraclitus Parmenides

Intellectual Posterity

The Boundless Pre-Socratic Philosophy

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