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Anaximander (ca.610 - ca.546 BCE) of Miletus was a student of Thales and recent scholarship argues that he, rather than Thales, should be considered the first Western philosopher owing to the fact that we have a direct and undisputed quote from Anaximander while we have nothing written by Thales. Anaximander invented the idea of models, drew the first map in Greece, and is said to have been the first to write a book of prose. He traveled extensively and was highly regarded by his contemporaries. His major contribution to philosophical thought was his claim that the 'basic stuff' of the universe was the apeiron, the infinite and boundless, a philosophical and theological claim still understood in essentially the same way today.

Simplicius writes, “Of those who say that it is one, moving, and infinite, Anaximander, son of Praxiades, a Milesian, the successor and pupil of Thales, said that the principle and element of existing things was the apeiron [indefinite or infinite] being the first to introduce this name of the material principle. He says that it is neither water nor any other of the so-called elements but some other apeiron nature, from which come into being all the heavens and the worlds in them. And the source of coming-to-be for existing things is that into which destruction, too, happens 'according to necessity; for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice according to the assessment of time,’ as he describes it in these rather poetical terms. It is clear that he, seeing the changing of the four elements into each other, thought it right to make none of these the substratum, but something else besides these; and he produces coming-to-be not through the alteration of the element, but by the separation off of the opposites through the eternal motion” (Physics, 24).

This statement by Anaximander, in "rather poetical terms", is considered the oldest known piece of Western philosophy.

Written by JPryst.

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