{"id":1177,"date":"2026-06-13T10:55:34","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T10:55:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.in2greece.com\/english\/historymyth\/history\/ancient\/?page_id=1177"},"modified":"2026-06-13T10:55:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T10:55:34","slug":"anaxagoras-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.in2greece.com\/english\/historymyth\/history\/ancient\/anaxagoras.htm","title":{"rendered":"Anaxagoras"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Who was the Ancient Greek Philosopher Anaxagoras<\/h2>\n\n\n

Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae, Ionia, around 500 BC. He was the son of Hegesibulos and belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family. Anaxagoras brought philosophy from Ionia to Athens, where he settled at the age of 20, to become a close friend and acquaintance of Pericles, whose teacher he became. He tried to renew Ionian physiology and combine it with the intellectual achievements of Parmenides and Empedocles. Anaxagoras had many interests and was involved in many branches of science (mathematics, astronomy, medicine) and cosmogony, where he developed his own theory about matter and its constituent elements.<\/p>\n

At the basis of the philosopher Anaxagoras’s thinking lies the denial of genesis and decay, as “…nothing is made or lost, but is composed and separated from pre-existing beings”. In other words, Anaxagoras does not accept the possibility of creating beings from the mixing of the four basic rhizomes of Empedocles, but believes that each individual substance existed in the world from the beginning. However, he was accused of atheism by the opponents of the great politician, and was forced, shortly before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, to abandon Athens and return to Ionia, where he founded a philosophical school, probably in Lampsacus.<\/p>\n

Anaxagoras was the first to examine the question of squaring the circle. Unfortunately, few excerpts have survived from his work “On Nature”, in which the sage correctly describes the phenomenon of lunar eclipses. According to Anaxagoras, matter is not composed of one or a few elements, but of infinite seeds, none of which disappear, except in different combinations and which each time constitute a new object. Their main properties do not always remain unchanged. Their quantity always remains the same.<\/p>\n

\"He was the first to formulate the concept that the unformed and mixed matter of the Universe was put into order by a “Mind”, who created unity and harmony. That is, that the movement of matter did not always exist and that its elements by themselves are incapable of setting it in motion. This ability is possessed only by the mind, a substance that differs from the others. This substance is diffused in the universe and homogeneous, independent and free, it is the source of all life. The mind is the knower of all things, eternal and omnipotent.<\/p>\n

On Astronomy, Anaxagoras believed that the Earth has a drum-shaped shape, and that it is held in the air (according to Aristotle), that the Sun is a fiery stone, while its size is larger than the Peloponnese, that the Moon is heteroluminous, and he considers it as a second Earth inhabited by humans and other beings. He also believes that the stars have a similar shape to that of the Sun, that comets are planets that emit flames, that shooting stars are “sparks” that are thrown out of the air, and that meteorites are stones that swirl and are attracted to the Earth.<\/p>\n

In medicine, he was the one who said that the fetus, when it is in the womb, is nourished through the navel, and that all diseases come from bile.<\/p>\n

“Everything that exists in the Megacosm also exists in the Microcosm. However, each thing is felt according to the element that exists within it”. He determined in an amazing way for his time the causes that cause eclipses of the Sun and the Moon and with his cosmogonic theories he foreshadowed the theories of Buffon, Laplace and Kant. Anaxagoras can be considered the forerunner of comparative physiology. He died in Ionia in 428 BC, dealing mainly with mathematics, physics, astronomy and medicine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who was the Ancient Greek Philosopher Anaxagoras Anaxagoras was born in Clazomenae, Ionia, around 500 BC. He was the son of Hegesibulos and belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family. Anaxagoras brought philosophy from Ionia to Athens, where he settled at the age of 20, to become a close friend and acquaintance of Pericles, whose
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