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Anaximenes of Miletus (/ˌænækˈsɪməˌniːz/; Greek: Ἀναξιμένης ὁ Μιλήσιος; c. 586 – c. 526 BC) was an Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher active in the latter half of the 6th century BC. The details of his life are obscure and undocumented. Apollodurus noted the dates Anaximander was alive in relation to defining historical events, and estimated Anaximenes’s lifespan to occur in same time period that Cyrus beat Croesus in 546 BCE. Some of his writings survived the Hellenistic Age, but no record of these documents currently exist. As one of the three Milesian philosophers that were considered the first revolutionary thinkers of the Western world, he is best known and identified as a younger friend or student of Anaximander. Much of his astronomical thought was based off of Anaximander’s, but he altered Anaximander’s astrological ideas to better fit his own philosophical views on physics and the natural world. The Ionian school was the first school on record that encouraged their pupils to constructively criticize their master’s teachings, which aptly demonstrated a tolerance toward new ideas and logic for their time. Thales taught Anaximander, and Anaximander taught Anaximenes. Each philosopher developed a distinct system of cosmology without completely rejecting their teacher’s view of universe or creating major disagreement between them. Anaximenes, like others in his school of thought, practiced material monism. This tendency to identify one specific underlying reality made up of a material thing is what Anaximenes is principally known for today. Anaximenes was the last known Milesian philosopher, as Miletus was taken over by the Persian army in 494 BC.

While his predecessors Thales and Anaximander proposed that the archai (singular: arche, meaning the underlying material of the world) were water and the ambiguous substance apeiron, respectively, Anaximenes asserted that aer (“mist,” “vapor,” “air”) was this primary substance of which all natural things are made. By rejecting his teacher’s theory based on the concept of discontinuity, Anaximenes took a more empirical approach to understanding the underlying processes of genesis and change on two assumptions: (1) origination retains properties of the aperion, but it has an actually tangible state of existence as air that can evolve other substances and (2) genesis and change depend on a cohesive, mechanistic process known as condensation and rarefaction. He believed that air was infinite and divine. Anaximenes was first to use the word Pneuma (“breath of life”) as a synonym with air. One of the only surviving quotes by Anaximenes reads, “Just as our soul...being air holds us together, so pneuma and air encompass [and guard] the whole world.” The analogy compared atmospheric air as the divine and human air as souls that animate people. This relation of the macroscopic and microscopic suggested Anaximenes believed there was an overarching principle that regulated all life and behavior. Essentially, he thought air was the primary substance that held the Universe together. Interestingly, The Old Testament features a similar analogy to the founding of the world and creation of man, but Anaximenes did not recognize a creator of the universe and did not think the pneuma as a creator to guide man. The choice of air may seem arbitrary, but Anaximenes based his conclusion on naturally observable phenomena in the processes of rarefaction and condensation. The primary difference in the forms of air as matter was the degree of condensation and density. When air condenses it becomes visible, and according to Anaximenes, the spread-out, invisible, infinite air was condensed to wind, then formed into clouds, which condensed further to produce mist, rain, and other forms of precipitation. As the condensed air cooled, Anaximenes supposed that Earth itself was an early condensate of air-- the process continued until the air was condensed enough to form solids like the Earth and ultimately stones. By contrast, Anaximenes was able to visually see how water evaporates into air and based his concept of rarefaction on this observation. According to him, any object that held light was made of fire, and fire was made from the rarefaction of air. While other philosophers also recognized such transitions in states of matter, Anaximenes was the first to associate the qualitative change in hot/dry and cold/wet pairings with the density of a single material, effectively adding a quantitative dimension to the Milesian monistic system. He attributed condensation to cold/wet air and rarefaction to the interaction of hot/dry air. This concept was the foundation for understanding the existence of different substances, materials, and elements due to their arrangement of atoms and number of subatomic particles.

Influence on Philosophy

Since language and communication was very limited in his time, Anaximenes’s analogies were key in explaining the uncertain through the certain. For example, he knew for certain that blowing air on his hand with his mouth wide open produced hot air, while blowing on his hand with half-closed lips produced cold air. These observations were key in his postulate that the hot air was due to rarefaction and expansion, whereas the cold air was due to condensation and compression. Although in modern times it is known that this is actually the opposite, Anaximenes was key in arriving at this conclusion. His analogies often connected parallels between man and the cosmos, insinuating that the same natural laws observable on earth applied to the heavens. Over 2000 years later, Isaac Newton proved this to be true. Throughout history, Anaximenes’s observations proved helpful to uncover powerful theories, such as quantum physics and chemical properties. By the end of the Milesian philosophy era, there were many questions left unanswered; this sparked the stimulation of Pre-socratic thought to continue through many other notable philosophers such as Pythagoras, Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Democritus.

Anaximenes of Miletus
Anaximenes of Miletus
Born	c. 586 BC
Died	c. 526 BC
Era	Pre-Socratic philosophy
Region	Ancient Greek city of Miletus (present-day Turkey) Inhabitant of the Occidental World
School	Ionian / Milesian Focused on Naturalism
Main interests	Metaphysics
Notable ideas	Air is the arche The Universe is in constant motion Matter changes through rarefaction and condensation