Anaximander was the second of three Milesian philosophers. Like Thales, he came of age in the time when Miletus was one of the most important Greek centers in the world. Also like Thales, he was interested in defining the world based on what it was made of. Whereas Thales said that everything is water, Anaximander said that everything was made up of that which we know not exactly what it is, but we know that it is infinite. This boundless or infinite, took the form of other things and those things in turn made up everything that exists. How he arrived at this conclusion is what is really interesting about early Greek philosophy.
Ancient Greeks believed in justice and a balance of power. It wasn't that they believed that we ought to receive justice but, that we are in the midst of justice that will eventually balance itself out. Like Thales, he agreed that there had to be some underlying and foundational substance of which everything else is derived from, but he said that it could not have been an element that we are familiar with because otherwise that fundamental substance would have swallowed everything else up. If there was too much water than water would be destroyed. If there was too much ground there wouldn't enough air. The elements had this symbiotic relationship and were assigned a specific amount of space to occupy by this cosmic sense of justice. But, fire and water and earth and air constantly try to expand their existence. Therefore, since there needs to be a primary substance and none of the elements can be that substance without overtaking all of the other substances, the substance must be something else. Also, things keep coming so that substance that makes up everything must be eternal and boundless. Staying with me? Glad you got it on the first try. It took us much longer.
Anaximander would have been a boring post though if we only spoke about first substances. It also would not have provided us with a platform to pose a lowbrow joke at the expense of someone else. Thus, we must continue on the topic of Anaximander in order for me to do, as what the hipsters call it, a snark. Anaximander also believed in evolution. He taught that man, like every other living creature, had evolved from fishes. His reasoning behind this was that man takes so long to mature during infancy that if he had been a man in the wild he would not have made it. This theory however, was not well received by the traditionalists who said that the Prometheus had made man and was subjected to the horrors of woman by Zeus' rage. But Anaximander was an excellent rhetorician and well funded by deep-pocketed liberals. He won the argument and his theory of evolution was taught to all the young Milesians. After years of trying the defeated traditionalists repackaged their thoughts and said that man posseses the ability to weild fire, this demands that man must've been given fire by something greater than himself. They said, "we admit that to say that Prometheus gave man fire, though an obvious and true statement, would go against your poor rendering of the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution; however, to not teach the existence of man because of the gift of fire alongside the theory of Anaximander's nonsense about man coming from what can be made in to school lunches when molded into straight lines, breaded and deep fried is a travesty of justice. Since there must necessarily be justice the Prometheus version must be taught along side the Anaximander one".
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