Anaximander of Miletus, Greek Philosopher
610 - 546 BC
Greek philosopher who was a pupil of Thales. Like Thales, Anaximander also imported ideas from the East, including the sundial. Anaximander conceived the idea that the stars were fixed on a crystalline sphere rotating around the Earth.
Anaximander thought the Earth to be cylindrical with a diameter three times its height, and the center of the universe. He visualized the mystic "unbounded" or "indefinite" ("apeiron") as the "first principle" which was both the source and destination of all material things. His cosmogony for producing the universe was a mechanical process by which light objects were flung out to the periphery of the universe by vortex motion. This separated the opposites of hot and cold, moist and dry, and Earth and aether.
Whatever has come into existence, must also pass away with necessity. Is is true to say, then, that there is nothing infinite in this world?
