Anaxagoras and Science

Anaxagoras was born a Persian subject in Asia Minor, around 500 BC -- the first of a wave of Greek intellectuals who migrated to Athens. In pondering connections in nature, Anaxagoras drew on the belief of philosophers before him that change is the result of an interaction among opposites. And he took philosophy a step toward science. Some were to describe him as the first scientist. Anaxagoras discovered that air tends to rise above solids, and he described air as a gas, which he saw as consisting of material particles too small to be visible. He envisioned the elements of the universe in all things and that preponderance gives something its appearance and character.

He lectured students and gave laboratory demonstrations. He is reported to have conducted experiments and to have tested hypotheses -- an advance over merely applying one's imagination to the struggle to understand.

Anaxagoras wrote theories on physics. And having learned about meteorites he described the sun and moon as fiery stones. He saw the moon as having mountains, and he attempted to describe scientifically the solar and lunar eclipses that for millennia had frightened people.

Anaxagoras believed that mind was mixed with materiality but that it was the finest substance. He believed that unlike everything else the substance that was mind remained disconnected from other substances. His word for the substance of mind was nous, and he theorized that mind was the first cause of all motion, change and order. Nous was for Anaxagoras, God.

Athens had conservatives who disliked Anaxagoras' view of the cosmos and his impiety toward traditional gods. They accused Anaxagoras of atheism, and they associated his impiety with disloyalty toward the city. Before the beginning of the Great Peloponnesian war, the city fathers sought to protect their city from disloyalty, and they forbid the teaching of Anaxagoras' opinions and outlawed the teachings of others on astronomy and meteorology. They drove Anaxagoras into exile, and Anaxagoras returned to Asia Minor, where he taught until he died in 428.

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