ANAXIMANDER, a celebrated Greek philosopher, the disciple and friend of Thales, and his immediate suc cessor in the Ionic school. He was born at Miletus, in 11h; 3u year of the 42d Olympiad, or in the 610th year beinro Christ, and lived to the age of 64. He was the first Grecian philosopher that taught in a public school, on which account he has been reckoned by some the founder of the Ionic sect, an honour which more properly belongs to Thales. He is also reported to have been the first that laid aside the defective method of oral tra dition, and commhted the principles of his doctrine to writing. llis works, however, if they ever existed, have now utterly perished, and we are obliged to guess at his opinions from the imperfect details concerning them which are to be gathered from the writings of Laertius, Plutarch, Pliny, and other ancient authorities.
Concerning the first principles of things, or the ori gin of the universe, Anaximander is said to have taught that infinity, or To U.iriipov, is the original cause of all phe nomena. All things, he said, are produced by infinity, and terminate in it ; and the universe, though variable in its parts. is immutable as a whole. Whether Anaxi mantler meant by infinity, the original chaos, or humid mass, which Thales denominated To; C;Vp0V, or the primi tive material subject, or great efficient cause of nature, are questions which do not now admit of an easy solution. Plutarch and Aristotle assert, that the infinity of Anaxi mander was matter : Hermias maintains, that Anaximan der supposed an eternal first mover prior to the humid mass of Thales. (kris, Gen. 1. 10. apud. Fatiam.) He is,
however, generally considered as having formed a very imperfect and erroneous notion of the nature of the great intellectual principles in the universe, and is by the learned Cudworth ranked among the atheistical philoso phers of antiquity.
Anaximander cultivated with considerable success the sciences of mathematics and astronomy. He is said to have been the first who formed an artificial globe, and delineated the divisions of land and water upon its sur face. The invention of the sun-dial has also been as cribed to him ; but Herodotus more justly assigns it to the Babylonians. (lib. 2. c. 32 ) By Pliny, too, he is said to have been the first who observed the obliquity of the ecliptic ; (lib. 2. c. 1.) but this was certainly the dis covery of an earlier age. The following are some of the physical notions imputed to Anaximander. The stars are globular collections of fire and air, borne about in the spheres in which they are placed, by portions of the divinity with which they are animated. The sun has the highest place in the heavens, the moon the next, and the planets and fixed stars the lowest. The earth is a globe, placed in the middle of the universe, and re mains in its place : and the sun is 23 times larger than the earth. Biog. Laert. 1. 2. Strabo,l. 1. Pliny, 1. 7. c. 56. Cicero, Acad. Quxst. iv. cap. 37. Brucher's and En field's Hist. r.,f Phil. (in)