Anaximenes (d.

528 BCE)

According to the surviving sources on his life,

Anaximenes flourished in the mid 6th century BCE and died around 528. He is the third
philosopher of the Milesian School of philosophy, so named because like Thales and
Anaximander, Anaximenes was an inhabitant of Miletus, in Ionia (ancient
Greece). Theophrastus notes that Anaximenes was an associate, and possibly a student, of
Anaximander’s.

Anaximenes is best known for his doctrine that air is the source of all things. In this way, he
differed with his predecessors like Thales, who held that water is the source of all things, and
Anaximander, who thought that all things came from an unspecified boundless stuff.

Table of Contents

1. Doctrine of Air
2. Doctrine of Change
3. Origin of the Cosmos
4. Influence on later Philosophy
5. References and Further Reading

1. Doctrine of Air
Anaximenes seems to have held that at one time everything was air. Air can be thought of as
a kind of neutral stuff that is found everywhere, and is available to participate in physical
processes. Natural forces constantly act on the air and transform it into other materials, which
came together to form the organized world. In early Greek literature, air is associated with the
soul (the breath of life) and Anaximenes may have thought of air as capable of directing its
own development, as the soul controls the body (DK13B2 in the Diels-Kranz collection of
Presocratic sources). Accordingly, he ascribed to air divine attributes.
2. Doctrine of Change
Given his doctrine that all things are composed of air, Anaximenes suggested an interesting
qualitative account of natural change:

[Air] differs in essence in accordance with its rarity or density. When it is thinned it becomes
fire, while when it is condensed it becomes wind, then cloud, when still more condensed it
becomes water, then earth, then stones. Everything else comes from these. (DK13A5)

Using two contrary processes of rarefaction and condensation, Anaximenes explains how air
is part of a series of changes. Fire turns to air, air to wind, wind to cloud, cloud to water,
water to earth and earth to stone. Matter can travel this path by being condensed, or the
reverse path from stones to fire by being successively more rarefied. Anaximenes provides a
crude kind of empirical support by appealing to a simple experiment: if one blows on one’s
hand with the mouth relaxed, the air is hot; if one blows with pursed lips, the air is cold
(DK13B1). Hence, according to Anaximenes we see that rarity is correlated with heat (as in
fire), and density with coldness, (as in the denser stuffs).

Anaximenes was the first recorded thinker who provided a theory of change and supported it
with observation. Anaximander had described a sequence of changes that a portion of the
boundless underwent to form the different stuffs of the world, but he gave no scientific reason
for changes, nor did he describe any mechanism by which they might come about. By
contrast, Anaximenes uses a process familiar from everyday experience to account for
material change. He also seems to have referred to the process of felting, by which wool is
compressed to make felt. This industrial process provides a model of how one stuff can take
on new properties when it is compacted.

3. Origin of the Cosmos

Anaximenes, like Anaximander, gives an account of how our world came to be out of
previously existing matter. According to Anaximenes, earth was formed from air by a felting
process. It began as a flat disk. From evaporations from the earth, fiery bodies arose which
came to be the heavenly bodies. The earth floats on a cushion of air. The heavenly bodies, or
at least the sun and the moon, seem also be flat bodies that float on streams of air. On one
account, the heavens are like a felt cap that turns around the head. The stars may be fixed to
this surface like nails. In another account, the stars are like fiery leaves floating on air
(DK13A14). The sun does not travel under the earth but circles around it, and is hidden by
the higher parts of the earth at night.

Like Anaximander, Anaximenes uses his principles to account for various natural
phenomena. Lightning and thunder result from wind breaking out of clouds; rainbows are the
result of the rays of the sun falling on clouds; earthquakes are caused by the cracking of the
earth when it dries out after being moistened by rains. He gives an essentially correct account
of hail as frozen rainwater.
Most commentators, following Aristotle, understand Anaximenes’ theory of change as
presupposing material monism. According to this theory, there is only one substance, (in this
case air) from which all existing things are composed. The several stuffs: wind, cloud, water,
etc., are only modifications of the real substance that is always and everywhere present.
There is no independent evidence to support this interpretation, which seems to require
Aristotle’s metaphysical concepts of form and matter, substratum and accident that are too
advanced for this period. Anaximenes may have supposed that the ‘stuffs’ simply change into
one another in order.

4. Influence on later Philosophy

Anaximenes’ theory of successive change of matter by rarefaction and condensation was
influential in later theories. It is developed by Heraclitus (DK22B31), and criticized
by Parmenides (DK28B8.23-24, 47-48). Anaximenes’ general theory of how the materials of
the world arise is adopted by Anaxagoras(DK59B16), even though the latter has a very
different theory of matter. Both Melissus (DK30B8.3) and Plato (Timaeus 49b-c) see
Anaximenes’ theory as providing a common-sense explanation of change. Diogenes of
Apollonia makes air the basis of his explicitly monistic theory. The Hippocratic treatise On
Breaths uses air as the central concept in a theory of diseases. By providing cosmological
accounts with a theory of change, Anaximenes separated them from the realm of mere
speculation and made them, at least in conception, scientific theories capable of testing.

5. References and Further Reading

There are no monographs on Anaximenes in English. Articles on him are sometimes rather
specialized in nature. A number of chapters in books on the Presocratics are helpful.

 Barnes, Jonathan. The Presocratic Philosophers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1

vol. edn.), 1982. Ch. 3.
o Gives a philosophically rich defense of the standard interpretation of
Anaximenes.
 Bicknell, P. J. “Anaximenes’ Astronomy.” Acta Classica 12: 53-85.
o An interesting reconstruction of the conflicting reports on Anaximenes’
astronomy.
 Classen, C. Joachim. “Anaximander and Anaximenes: The Earliest Greek Theories of
Change?” Phronesis 22: 89-102.
o This article provides a good assessment of one of Anaximenes’ major
contributions.
 Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge U.
Pr., 1962. 115-40.
o A good introduction to Anaximenes’ thought.
 Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven and M. Schofield. The Presocratic Philosophers. 2nd edn.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983. Ch. 4.
o A careful analysis of the texts of Anaximenes.
 Wöhrle, Georg. Anaximenes aus Milet. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1993.
o This brief edition adds four new testimonies to the evidence about
Anaximenes and challenges the standard interpretation. It is useful as a
 counterbalance to the received view, though I think particular criticisms it
makes of that view are wrong.
o http://www.iep.utm.edu/anaximen/

Anaximenes Of Miletus ,  (flourished c. 545 bc), Greek philosopher of nature and one of

three thinkers of Miletus traditionally considered to be the first philosophers in the Western
world. Of the other two, Thales held that water is the basic building block of all matter,
whereas Anaximander chose to call the essential substance “the unlimited.”

Anaximenes substituted aer (“mist,” “vapour,” “air”) for his predecessors’ choices. His
writings, which survived into the Hellenistic Age, no longer exist except in passages in the
works of later authors. Consequently, interpretations of his beliefs are frequently in conflict.
It is clear, however, that he believed in degrees of condensation of moisture that
corresponded to the densities of various types of matter. When “most evenly distributed,” aer
is the common, invisible air of the atmosphere. By condensation it becomes visible, first as
mist or cloud, then as water, and finally as solid matter such as earth or stones. If further
rarefied, it turns to fire. Thus hotness and dryness typify rarity, whereas coldness and wetness
are related to denser matter.

Anaximenes’ assumption that aer is everlastingly in motion suggests that he thought it also
possessed life. Because it was eternally alive, aer took on qualities of the divine and became
the cause of other gods as well as of all matter. The same motion accounts for the shift from
one physical state of the aer to another. There is evidence that he made the common analogy
between the divine air that sustains the universe and the human “air,” or soul, that animates
people. Such a comparison between a macrocosm and a microcosm would also permit him to
maintain a unity behind diversity as well as to reinforce the view of his contemporaries that
there is an overarching principle regulating all life and behaviour.

A practical man and a talented observer with a vivid imagination, Anaximenes noted the
rainbows occasionally seen in moonlight and described the phosphorescent glow given off by
an oar blade breaking the water. His thought is typical of the transition from mythology to
science; its rationality is evident from his discussion of the rainbow not as a goddess but as
the effect of sun rays on compacted air. Yet his thought is not completely liberated from
earlier mythological or mystical tendencies, as seen from his belief that the universe is
hemispherical. Thus, his permanent contribution lies not in his cosmology but in his
suggestion that known natural play a part in the making of a world. This suggestion, together
with Anaximenes’ reduction of apparent qualitative differences in substances to mere
differences of quantity, was highly influential in the development of scientific thought.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/23162/Anaximenes-Of-Miletus
Anaximenes (in Greek: Άναξιμένης) of Miletus (c. 585 – 528 B.C.E.) was a pre-Socratic
Greek philosopher, the third of the philosophers of Ionia (the first being Thales and the
second Anaximander). He was a citizen of Miletus and a student of Anaximander.

Thales, the first philosopher of Ionia, conceived the original being of all beings to be “water,”
based upon his philosophy of life. Anaximander, a student of Thales, heightened the level of
abstraction and identified the original being not with an element in the world, such as
“water,” but with the “indefinite” or “unbounded.” Anaximenes, a student of Anaximander,
conceived the original being to be “air,” the extension of an element of the world.

Aristotle interpreted all these Ionian thinkers, within the framework of his ontology of form
and matter, as predecessors who inquired into the material cause of being.

Anaximenes conceived “air” as an extension of breath, which implies a type of philosophy of

life. The wonder and mystery of life shaped his thoughts, and his primary concept of being
was taken from living beings. The concept of “air” should not be interpreted to be purely
material air in a modern sense. One may find some affinity between Anaximenes’ “air” and
“qi” (氣) in Chinese thought. Furthermore, one may find an intrinsic connection between
Anaximenes' "air" and the original concept of "ruach" found in the ancient pre-Babylonian
Exile Hebraic tradition. The one remaining passage in Aetius’ Historiography reads:

As our soul, being air, holds us together and controls us, so does wind (or breath) and air
enclose the whole world. (Diels and Kranz 13B2)

Like “water” in Thales and the “indefinite” in Anaximander, “air” in Anaximenes is also
divine and imperishable. The origin of beings was conceived to be one and eternal for these
pioneers of Western philosophy.

Some regard Anaximander as the peak of Ionian philosophy due to his high level of
abstraction and Anaximenes as a recession from it, since Anaximenes conceived the origin of
being to be the extension of an element of the world as Thales had.

Others, however, regard Anaximenes as representing a development comparable to

Anaximander. While Anaximander conceived the origin of being, the “indefinite,” in the
sense of original matter, Anaximenes tried to find some intermediary element between
material and the human soul in an incipient form. By “air,” Anaximenes meant some original
element that can give life (breath or soul) to human beings and that can also transform itself
into diverse natural beings. His concept of “air,” like “qi” in Chinese thought, seems not to be
an element of the world, but a homogeneous existence that can uniformly explain both
spiritual and physical phenomena.
Life and works
Little is known about the life of Anaximenes, except for his being a Miletian, a student or a
colleague of Anaximander, and his approximate years of birth and death. Only a limited
number of fragments survive in the works of other authors. As is the case for the other pre-
Socratics, a definitive interpretation is impossible due to the lack of surviving texts.

Anaximenes introduced the principle of dual characteristics of hot and cold as the principle of
diversification, which causes rarefaction and densification of “air,” generating the diversity of
the world. While Anaximander separated the principle of diversification from the ultimate
being (“indefinite”), Anaximenes made the principle of diversification intrinsic to the original
being. Some regard this as an advancement comparable with that of Anaximander.

The theory of “qi” developed over the centuries and became a foundation for medical,
artistic, philosophical, and other cultural practices in Far Eastern culture. Unfortunately,
Anaximenes’ theory of “air” was not taken up and developed by subsequent thinkers and
theorists.

In Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (Refutation of Heretics), Hippolutus, a third-century church

father, records Anaximenes’ theory of diversification of the world, which reads:

Being made finer it [air] becomes fire, being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then
(when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stone; and the rest comes into being from
those. He, too, makes motion eternal, and says that change, also, comes about through it.
(Diels and Kranz 13A7)

Every being is, in essence, air at different degrees of density, and under the influence of heat,
which expands, and of cold, which contracts its volume, it gives rise to the several phases of
existence. The process is gradual, and takes place in two directions, as heat or cold
predominates. In this way was formed a broad disc called earth, floating on the
circumambient air. Similar condensations produced the sun and stars; and the flaming state of
these bodies is due to the velocity of their motions.

Some scientific discoveries are also ascribed to Anaximenes: that rainbows are created as
light shines through condensed air (mist), how the moon reflects sunlight, and others.

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Anaximenes_of_Miletus