Anaximander and the Origins of Scientific Thought

Friends and Colleagues – if you’re taking some holiday over the coming weeks I would recommend the latest short book published for the first time in English on 23rd February 2023 by the theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli on the Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaximander (1).

Born in 610 BCE in the Greek city of Miletus in Ionia on what is now the Aegean coast of Turkey, Anaximander was a student of Thales who reportedly made the first accurate prediction of a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. Anaximander’s philosophy is available to us only as fragments of direct quotations or testimony by later authors, the original manuscripts having been lost or destroyed. Nevertheless he is the first of whom we have concrete evidence of making a comprehensive attempt to provide a rational naturalistic explanation of aspects of the world across diverse fields (inter alia): geography (he constructed the first map of the (then) known inhabited world); astronomy (for example he postulated that the Earth is a stone floating in space without falling); ?meterology (for example that rain derives from vapour that under the influence of the sun rises from the Earth) and biology (for example that in the beginning man was born from creatures of a different kind). He also theorised the existence of an underlying cause of observed natural phenomena (apeiron) which is not directly perceptible but can be understood through observation and reason.

Whilst some of his theories have stood the test of time and others not, he was one of a group of Ionian thinkers (which also included Anaximenes, Xenophanes and Heraclitus) who broke with ancient forms of mythical-religious thought based on received wisdom and promoted rational inquiry into the natural world, in so doing laying some of the foundations of modern scientific thinking (2). ?

What was it that supported this radical departure from long-established ritual, myth and religion which the anthropologist Roy Rappaport argues were foundational in early human societies (3)?

Clearly there were some proximate causes in respect to the environmental disaster caused by the eruption of the Thera (Santorini) super volcano around 1600 BCE and the subsequent systems collapse of theocratic Bronze Age civilisations in the Mediterranean around 1200 BCE leading to a Dark Age from which a cluster of independent Greek City States emerged around 800 BCE (4). However, in an essay published in 1976, Julian Jaynes argued that the ultimate cause was a profound change in human psychology which was occurring at this time across the world with the breakdown of what he termed the ‘bicameral mind’ and the emergence of subjective consciousness – our sense of self awareness, individuality and responsibility (5).

Jaynes’ theory is complex, multi-faceted and contested and the above explanation does not begin to give it justice, maybe this is a subject for a different post?

1.??????Rovelli C. Anaximander: And the Nature of Science. Allen Lane 23 February 2023.

2.??????Kirk GS, Raven JE, Schofield M. The Presocratic Philosophers. Second Edition. Cambridge University Press 1983.

3.??????Rappaport R. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge University Press 1999.

4.??????Cline EH. 1177 BC: The Year Civilisation Collapsed. Princeton University Press. 2014.

5.??????Jaynes J. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Mariner Books. 1976.