From the Beginning to Plato

44 FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO
(Hippolytus Refutation I.7.4 [KRS 151])
Anaximenes is usually reckoned one of the least interesting of the pre-Socratics.
What we are told of his cosmological system indicates a theorist deaf to the
imaginative a priori reasonings which appear to have motivated many of the
ideas of his mentor Anaximander; and Anaximander’s own mentor, Thales, was
—as we have been seeing— the pioneer who initiated the whole Ionian tradition
of physical speculation, so far as we can tell from the inadequate surviving
evidence of his views. Yet in some respects at least Anaximenes was a more
influential figure than either of his two predecessors. And this is of crucial
importance for our evaluation of the evidence relating to them. Hence the
decision to start our enquiry into Thales’ flat-earthism with what we are told
about Anaximenes.
Anaximenes’ influence is apparent from Aristotle’s testimony about his
account of the earth. The two great Ionian cosmologies of the fifth century were
propounded by Anaxagoras and the atomists Leucippus and Democritus. There
are radical and systematic differences in the explanatory foundations of the two
theories. But despite their sophistication in responding to metaphysical and
epistemological challenges posed by Parmenides and (at least in the atomists’
case) Zeno, both endeavour to account for a world conceived in terms defined by
Anaximenes, as Aristotle’s report (KRS 150, quoted above) makes clear. It is a
world in which (a) the earth is taken to be a flat body surrounded by air above
and below, (b) bodies fall through the air unless there is some special cause of
their not doing so, and (c) flatness is just such a cause. This is a picture of the world
far removed from our own heliocentric model, where the earth is (roughly
speaking) a spherical object spinning in an elliptical orbit round the sun. In
Anaximenes’ version it is not even a geocentric model, because while he
imagines the earth as occupying a position between above and below, there is no
implication that it is at the centre of a system: the heavenly bodies do not revolve
about it, but turn in a circle above it. 6
There can be little doubt of the importance Anaximenes attached to theses (a)
to (c). As Hippolytus’ evidence in KRS 151 suggests, he applied the same kind
of reasoning to account for the appearance of the sun and moon in the heavens.
Just as the earth does not fall downwards, so they too are supported by air and
hence stay aloft— even when they are not apparent:
He says that the stars do not move under the earth, as others have supposed,
but round it, just as if a felt cap is being turned round our head; and that the
sun is hidden not by passing under the earth, but through being covered by
the higher parts of the earth and through its increased distance from us.
(Hippolytus Refutation I.7.6 [KRS 156])
Probably the sun and moon at least are conceived of by Anaximenes as bodies. 7
That is, though fiery they are forms of earth, just as in Anaxagoras: Anaxagoras