Philosopher File: Anaxagoras
One of the Greek world’s earliest scientists, on the gunky nature of everything.
The Presocratic philosophers are famously strange and difficult; but of all of them, Anaxagoras, who saw the universe as essentially gunky, is one of the strangest.
Anaxagoras: Life
Anaxagoras was born into a wealthy family around the year 500 BCE in the city of Clazomenae, close to present-day Izmir on the coast of Turkey. When he was around twenty years old, he left Clazomenae for Athens. Accounts of why he moved to Athens differ: but some commentators claim that he left home because he was afraid that wealth and political power would get in the way of his pursuit of knowledge. Diogenes Laërtius, for example, tells the following story:
In the end, he retired and studied nature, giving no thought to public affairs. When someone asked him, “Have you no care for your country?” he replied, “Hush, I am very concerned about my country,” and he pointed to the heavens.
Like many of Diogenes Laërtius’s stories, this sounds more like fiction than history. But it does highlight Anaxagoras’s huge preoccupation (like many Presocratic philosophers) with astronomy.
