With his discoveries, Anaxamander of Miletus attempted to bring the realm of the
unreal to the world where common man could conceive it. As successor and pupil
of Thales of Miletus, Anaxamander worked on the fields of geometry, natural
science, and astrology. The culmination of his life attempted to define the
indefinite or undetermined. He was the first to discover and apply the theory of
the unlimited. For a philosopher of this time period, he had many radical ideas.
Anaxamander believed many different things about the position of the Earth. He
also published a book, On Nature, which revealed his theories about the
evolution of Earth and man. Under the tutelage of Thales, Anaxamander studied
numerous things about earth and life. While he did make some contributions to
the world of mathematics, his greatest achievements were probably in science and
astrology. His most notable accomplishment, however, was the gnomon. The gnomon
is the large rod that is erected from the base of the sundial. This led him to
other things, such as the prediction of solstices and equinoxes. His attempts at
prediction carried over and allowed him to create maps of both the real and
celestial worlds. In addition to his celestial interests, Anaxamander believed
that the Earth hung in the middle of the sky and was held there by the pull of
objects at either side. Along this line he also believed that the world
possessed a cylindrical form. He believed that the Earth was encompassed by a
flame, that was broken into pieces in order to generate the sun, moon, and
stars. The heavenly bodies, Anaxamander thought, were each a wheel of fire. When
holes in the wheel were clogged then an eclipse occurred. The seas upon the
earth were the result of leftover primal moisture. Strong winds came through and
dried some places, which are now land; what was left became the seas and oceans.
Anaxamander’s attempt to bring the world of the unknown to reality was the
most difficult task that one could encounter. Well-known for his theory of
Apeiron, or the unlimited, Anaxamander pursued the changes of the Earth. He
basically thought that apeiron compensated for the many changes the Earth
undergoes. As a fragment from Anaxamander says, “the unlimited is the first
principle of things that are. It is that from which the coming-to-be takes
place, and it is that to which they return when they perish, by moral necessity,
giving satisfaction to one another and making reparation for their injustice,
according to the order of time.” Coming to be is the separation of opposites
and does not involve any change in the natural being of a substance. Anaxamander
thought that it was neither water nor any other substance, but it is of entirely
different nature than that in which the unlimited exists. He believed that all
things existed in some place. Whether they were absent or conspicuous was
irrelevant; they still existed. He believed that qualities came into existence,
vanished away, only to return again. Anaxamnder took into consideration that
“there was a storehouse or reservoir from which the qualities that now
confront us have ‘separated off’ and into which, when their contraries come
forth in time, they will go back; the process being repeated in reverse, and so
on in never-ending cycles.” Anaxamander, unlike most philosophers of this
time, assessed that the world was created from air, not water. He assumed that
everything was created from nothing. This nothing, however, was actually the
unknown. The unknown, as Anaxamander defines it, can best be described as the
other half of what is. The undetermined is what is not and cannot be seen.
Equally as important are water, land, and fire that were created by the density
in the air. Each of these three things, as seen from Anaxamander’s point of
view, were the origin of all the rest of what exists. Water, of course, was the
origin of life. From this water, first came fish that would evolve into what is
now man.

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