Anaximenes

(Originally written August 30, 2006 in History I)

The Classical Mind by W.T. Jones

Anaximenes:

Anaximenes was the third Milesian philosopher and critiqued Anaximander's theory the way Anaximander had critiqued Thales' philosophy. Anaximenes was a younger contemporary of Anaximander.

Like Thales and Anaximander, Anaximenes believed in the one stuff (monism). But unlike Thales' water or Anaximander's boundless, Anaximenes believed that one stuff to be air.

Anaximenes doubted the boundless stuff because it had no characteristics. He rejected it because Anaximander's view held conflicting points: a material evolutionary process and a boundless infinite stuff were incompatible in Anaximenes' mind.

He held that qualitative changes could be explained as changes in the destiny of air. Air dilated into a rarer form became fire. Air condensed became wind. Wind condensed became water. Water condensed became Earth. Earth condensed became rock.

Neither Thales nor Anaximander nor Anaximenes knew anything of experimentation and thus, never tested their theories.

The Milesian philosophers were ignorant of scientific method (as were all Greeks), but the Milesians laid the foundations for the scientific method.