Anaxagoras

University of phoenix | Philosophy | Week One Pre Socratic Philosopher | | Shell dunham | 6/14/2012 | | Anaxagoras expanded upon the knowledge of prior philosophers with his own theories leading to a more comprehensive conclusion for existence of the universe. Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to attach the importance to the concept of mind. His philosophy denied the divinity of all other gods except his principle, mind. Anaxagoras did not accept the sun and moon as divinities. Instead Anaxagoras formulated a molecular theory of matter regarding the physical universe as subject to the rules of rationality and reason. Anaxagoras’ concept of mind was not an unsubstantial, exclusive mental, spiritual, or divine entity. Anaxagoras described his cosmic mind as the most delicate and purest of all things. Anaxagoras asserted that mind even now is where all things are too, in the surrounding plenitude as well as in all things that have been assembled and things that have been disassembled. With this in mind, the Greeks changed their way of understanding birth and death. Everything is assembled from existing things and then dissolved so birth became combination and death became dissociation. This means that any individual thing comes into being by combining preexisting components and is dissolved into its constituent parts when it ceases to exist. In his application of this belief, he came to believe that there was a chaos of seeds of all things jumbled until mind inserted motion, a spiritual component. The universe was created as it gained speed forming a vortex and objects separated out. He concluded that there is a portion of everything in everything. He asserted that all things were together, infinite in number. With this he challenged an earlier belief that the universe was one continuous whole, which was not in the past, only an everlasting unchanging present. Anaxagoras believed his spiritual substance, mind, gave order to the world of atoms. I am compelled to believe Anaxagoras’ philosophy. Anaxagoras exhibits the laws of nature as we know them today. In Anaxagoras’ day there was little scientific practice to conclude his theory, yet Anaxagoras was extremely scientific in his thinking. He applied reason to his theories and made order of chaos based on the world’s content in his times. Anaxagoras looked to natural order of things to determine logical conclusion to the existence of the universe. Anaxagoras did not ponder on question of where or how the large mass had come to be, but rather the way it had come to be a universe. Today there are scientific facts that provide evidence of Anaxagoras’ understanding of natural law and order of things. While he was not always correct in his conclusions of everything, Anaxagoras was more accurate in his assessments than most philosophers, setting man on a course of better understanding of the workings of the universe and life still being explored today. In conclusion Anaxagoras’ ability to see the world from a different prospective and understand the inner workings of all things in conjunction with relativity to one another has opened a whole new world as we understand and study it today.