Quotes about Anaximander

4 Sourced Quotes

Anaximander used to assert that the primary cause of all things was the Infinite,—not defining exactly whether he meant air or water or anything else.

Diogenes Laërtius

Anaximander the Milesian, a disciple of Thales, first dared to draw the inhabited world on a tablet; after him Hecataeus the Milesian, a much-travelled man, made the map more accurate, so that it became a source of wonder.

Anaximander says that men were first produced in fishes, and when they were grown up and able to help themselves were thrown up, and so lived upon the land.

The Pythagoreans were not the first to think of suggesting a pattern of numbers as key to the distances between the heavenly bodies (Anaximander had already made that breakthrough, a little ahead of Pythagoras). But in the Pythagorean speculations we can see that the notion of harmony, and the power of simple ratios in the tetraktys, has encouraged them to suggest that perfect patterns are what we would expect.

Catherine Rowett