Anaxagoras
From Wikiquote
Anaxagoras (c. 500 BC – 428 BC) was a Presocratic Greek philosopher, from Clazomenae in Asia Minor. He introduced the concept of Mind (Nous), as an ordering force in the cosmos. He regarded material substance as an infinite multitude of imperishable primary elements, referring all generation and disappearance to mixture and separation respectively.
[edit] Sourced
- All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite.
- Frag. B 1, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
- And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours
- Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
- Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.
- Frag. B 12, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
- The Greeks follow a wrong usage in speaking of coming into being and passing away; for nothing comes into being or passes away, but there is mingling and separation of things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being mixture, and passing away separation.
- Frag. B 17, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
[edit] External links
- Anaxagoras entry by Patricia Curd in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Translation and Commentary from John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy.
