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Anaxagoras, However, both of these philosophers also express…
Anaxagoras
Biography
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was from Clazomenae, a town near Ionia,
but he spent the greater part of his life in Athens
He was close to Pericles, and late in his life he was put on trial for impiety (like Socrates later) by Pericles’s enemies and condemned to die
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Fortunately, he was rescued from prison (unlike Socrates) and escaped from Athens
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World explanation
For Anaxagoras there are not just four elements, but an innumerable
variety of basic elements, which he calls “seeds.
Objects are not composed of simply a single kind of seed, but are always a mixture containing the whole variety of seeds, though the seeds that predominate
give objects their observable character
The “hidden” seeds, however, are present, and explain how objects can change their characteristics as the mixture changes and different kinds of seeds that were only latent before become predominant
This is not atomist's view , since Anaxagoras
does not believe that there is a “smallest part” of an object.
Interesting facts
Anaxagoras agrees that change is a process in which more basic
unchanging realities are being combined and separated.
He disagrees ,both about the nature of the underlying, unchanging reality and about the principles that govern the processes of mixing and dissolving
Anaxagoras’s view of Nous is clearly a move in the direction of monotheism, and has a marked effect on his successors
Aristotle, for example,
says that Anaxagoras “seemed like a sober man in comparison with hispredecessors,”
Plato has Socrates recall his high hopes when he
hears that Anaxagoras affirmed Mind as the ultimate cause of the universe
Aristotle says that when Anaxagoras “is at a loss to tell from what
cause something necessarily is, then he drags reason in, but in all other cases ascribes events to anything rather than to reason.”
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However, both of these philosophers also express disappointment that Anaxagoras does not make full use of Mind as an explanation
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Still he affirms that Mind “has control
over all things,” both animate objects and the cosmos as a whole
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