Anaximenes

(Anaximenes) (ok.585 - ok.525 BC)
pupil and successor, Anaximander. Subject only (not preserved) A treatise. "The nature" - cosmogony, cosmography and the etiology of meteorological phenomena. The system of the universe from a. detects typological affinity with the later tradition of nature-philosophy of Heraclitus - Diogenes of Apollonia - Stoic. Thus, on the principle of parallelism of macrocosm and microcosm based selection A. Air (primarily, . its function "air breathing") as a cosmogonic initio and relevant vital foundation of the Cosmos: "Just, . as the soul of our, . as air, . keeps [us from the collapse], . and embrace the entire cosmos breath and air,
. "Encompassing" Space foremothers of A., as in Anaximander, is limitless, but in place of the "separation" from the original "mixture" embedded in it qualitatively dissimilar corpuscles of hot and cold "," wet and dry ", etc.. phone (as in Anaximander) A. the first time puts the "concentration and dilution of the" one and as if beskachestvennoy foremothers, . giving, . thus, . first theory of qualitative change and paving the way, . one hand, . Heraclitus the doctrine of the unity of opposites, . on the other - through reduction of sensible qualities to a quantitative indicator of the density "air" - the doctrine Eleatic school and Democritus illusory world of sense properties,
.
For cosmography A. characteristic of empiricism (eg, rejecting the idea of the Southern Hemisphere sky). According to A., a flat Earth hangs in the air, as if "astride" him, the sky is a semi-circular dome-shaped solid body, in which stars hammered like nails (hence the term fixed stars). A. noted the difference between the planets and the stars (perhaps the first time in ancient Greece), and believed that the planets (including Sun and the Moon), in contrast to the stars, freely floating in the air. Below the moon, he admitted the existence of still and dark, invisible bodies - to explain why lunar eclipses are more common than sun. A. - By teaching about the origin of stars, identified with the "gods" folk religion, a marine evaporative.
In honor of A. named minor planet (asteroid) number 6051