Anaximene

Anaximène (in Greek Ἀναξιμήνης / Anaximếnês ) is a Philosophe Greek born towards 585 av. J. - C., which lived with Milet and died towards 525 av. J. - C.

Biography

Anaximene, wire of Eurystrate, were born in Milet. According to Diogène Laërce (II, 3), he died in the 63e Olympiade (528 - 525 av. J. - C.). He was the last disciple of the school milésienne founded by Thalès. He would have been the pupil of Anaximandre. Its writings, besides some fragments, disappeared. Diogène Laërce (II, 4 and 5) has transmitted two letters of him to us to Pythagore. Perhaps it had Anaxagore and Diogène d' Apollonie for disciples.

Cosmology

In Physical and Astronomy, it did not bring any decisive progress compared to its precursors. It followed its predecessors by designing the Earth in suspension. It conceived it punt and circular, covered with a celestial dome. The Sun and the Moon were also flat discs which turned around the ground. He refused however the fact that the Sun passes under the Earth. The night, according to him, it was dissimulated behind the horizon to turn over to its morning starting point.

Anaximene believed that the stars were nailed with the vault of heaven, which made of them the elements furthest away from the Earth. A little more close were the planets, then the Sun and finally the Moon. He affirmed that the air is at the origin of any thing: dilated to the extreme, this air becomes fire; compressed, it is transformed into wind; it produces clouds, which give water when they are compressed - a stronger compression of water transforms this one into ground, whose most condensed form is the stone.

The scientist

He sought, like all the Ionian philosophers of nature, the principle of all things, the origin and the structure of the Universe. He supported that the Air constitutes the substance first, which resembles the cosmology of Anaximandre, which had brought the concept of the Apeiron . All that exists in the world was nothing more than of the rarefied air or digest. Thus, by rarefaction, the heated air changes on fire, forming the celestial bodies such as the Sun. By condensation, it cools and becomes successively the wind, the clouds, water and the ground.

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