The last of the Milesians - Anaximenes, and we have become fire

So, how do we top our hopelessly sarcastic and barely educational post on Anaximander? Do we harken back to the more informative posts like on Thales where we blind side you with a jab at the end? Well, we don't know. Generally speaking we begin to write what pops into our head, briefly read over it to ensure that we don't say anything that would embarrass our fiancee, the lovely E, and then push publish post and look for places to generate interest on it. There isn't a formula though I am certain it appears so.

So what do we have to say about Anaximenes? Bertrand Russell says that he was much more admired in antiquity than Anaximander, but that this trend has been reversed in modernity. Because modernity tends to be wrong, we here at this blog of repute have backed Anaximenes for whichever office he so chooses.

But, what did Anaximenes teach. Like Thales and his obsession with water and Anaximander and his indefinable infinite item, Anaximenes believed in a fundamental substance. His fundamental substance was air. He reasoned, "the soul is air; fire is rarefied air; when condensed air becomes first water, then if further condensed, earth, and finally stone" (Taken from Bertrand Russell's The History of Western Philosophy). So what does it mean???

It means that air becomes fire when it becomes less dense and other things when it becomes denser. If the soul then is air, when it becomes less dense or otherwise more intelligent, then it becomes fire. We have suddenly had the revelation as to why we are consistently sweating. It has nothing to do with our tropical surroundings or extra poundage, only that we have become so intellectually stimulated and stimulating that we have become the very embodiment of fire. Beware of Leibniz, he has become flame. Come near him and in the famous words of Michael Kelso, burn.

Obviously we chose the last second jab route.

Burn.