Anaximenes

Anaximenes

The Classical Mind
W.T. Jones
1980

-third of the Milesian philosophers
-monist, his one stuff is air
-Rejected Anaximander's boundless because the boundless is easy to talk about but impossible to define. Every 'thing' has characteristics that make it a 'thing'. The boundless has no characteristics by definition and therefore, can't be a thing at all, let alone the one thing. He showed that Anaximander's theory, rather than solving the problem of how one thing becomes many things, it simply masks the problem.
-Air, being the one stuff for Anaximenes changes quantitatively (becoming more or less dense) that effects the qualitative change in the many things that air becomes through this process.
-"Anaximenes laid the basis for a  quantitative description of the world" (Jones, 14).

The History of Western Philosophy
Bertrand Russell
1972

-The fundamental substance for Anaximenes was air. "The soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed, air becomes first water, then if further condensed, earth, and finally stone" (Russell, 28).
-Anaximenes advance was to make the difference between substances quantitative.
-The earth is shaped like a round table and air encompasses it. The air holds up the earth like the soul (also made of air) holds man together
-Influenced Pythagoras

Early Greek Philosophy
Jonathan Barnes
2001

-Unlike his earlier contemporary Anaximander who wrote in 'somewhat poetical words', Anaximenes wrote in a simple and economical style
-Principle substance is limitless air, from which what is coming, is and what was is composed of.
-The air is always in motion
-Air becomes other substances either by becoming rarefied or by condensing.
-Earth is flat. The sun and the moon and other heavenly bodies are flat and ride in the air because of their flatness
-"The heavenly bodies have come into being from earth, because mist rises from the earth and is rarefied and produces fire, and the heavenly bodies are composed of this fire when it is aloft" (Barnes, 24).
-our souls are air and hold us together, breath and air encompass the whole world
-Air, the first principle is necessarily limitless because it never gives out