Apeiron (cosmology)
Encyclopedia
Apeiron is a Greek
word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit", the Ionic Greek
form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary".
theory created by Anaximander
in the 6th century BC. Anaximander's work is mostly lost. From the few existing fragments, we learn that he believed the beginning or ultimate reality (arche
) is eternal and infinite, or boundless (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived. Apeiron generated the opposites, hot-cold, wet-dry etc., which acted on the creation of the world. Everything is generated from apeiron and then it is destroyed there according to necessity. He believed that infinite worlds are generated from apeiron and then they are destroyed there again.
His ideas were influenced by the Greek mythical
tradition and by his teacher Thales
(7th-6th century BC). Searching for some universal principle, Anaximander retained the traditional religious assumption that there was a cosmic order and tried to explain it rationally, using the old mythical language which ascribed divine control on various spheres of reality. This language was more suitable for a society which could see gods everywhere; therefore the first glimmerings of laws of nature were themselves derived from divine laws. The Greeks believed that the universal principles could also be applied to human societies. The word nomos (law) may originally have meant natural law and been used later to mean man-made law.
Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction, adopting apeiron as the origin of all things, because it is completely indefinite. This is a further transition from the previous existing mythical way of thought to the new rational
way of thought which is the main characteristic of the archaic period
(8th-6th century BC). This way of thought is a result of the new political conditions in the Greek city states during the 6th century BC.
cosmogony
of Hesiod
(8th-7th century BC) the beginning (arche) of the universe is Chaos
, the void considered as a divine primordial condition. This is described as a large gap where there are the sources and ends of the earth, sky, sea and Tartarus
. One can name it also abyss
(having no bottom). Thales believed that the origin or first principle was water. Pherecydes of Syros
(6th century BC) probably called the water also Chaos and this is not placed at the very beginning.
In the creation stories of Near East the primordial world is described formless and empty. The only existing thing prior to creation was the water abyss. The Babylonian cosmology Enuma Elish
describes the earliest stage of the universe as one of watery chaos and something similar is described in Genesis.
In the Hindu
cosmogony which is similar to the Vedic
(Hiranyagarbha
) the initial state of the universe was an absolute darkness.
Hesiod made an abstraction, because his original chaos is a void, something completely indefinite. In his opinion the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate. The indefiniteness is spatial in early usages as in Homer
(indefinite sea). A fragment from Xenophanes
(6th century BC) shows the transition from chaos to apeiron: "The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit reaches down to the unlimited. (i.e. the Apeiron)". Either apeiron meant the 'spatial indefinite' and was implied to be indefinite in kind, or Anaximander intended it primarily 'that which is indefinite in kind' but assumed it also to be of unlimited extent and duration.
Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction making apeiron the principle of all things and some scholars saw a gap between the existing mythical and the new rational way of thought (rationalism). But if we follow the course, we will see that there is not such an abrupt break with the previous thought. The basic elements of nature, water
, air
, fire
, earth
, which the first Greek philosophers believed that composed the world, represent in fact the mythical primordial forces. The collision of these forces produced the cosmic harmony according to the Greek cosmogony (Hesiod). Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between these elements, therefore he chose something else (indefinite in kind) which could generate the others without experiencing any decay.
There is also a fragment attributed to his teacher Thales: "What is divine? What has no origin, nor end."This probably led his student to his final decision for apeiron, because the divinity applied to it implies that it always existed. The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality and Anaximander's description was in terms appropriate to this conception. This arche is called "eternal and ageless" (Hippolitus I,6,I;DK B2).
. It acts as the substratum supporting opposites such as hot and cold, wet and dry, and directed the movement of things, by which there grew up all of the host of shapes and differences which are found in the world.
Out of the vague and limitless body there sprang a central mass — this earth of ours — cylindrical in shape. A sphere of fire surrounded the air around the earth and had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree. When it broke, it created the sun, the moon and the stars. The first animals were generated in the water. When they came to earth they were transmuted by the effect of the sun. The human being sprung from some other animal, which originally was similar to a fish. The blazing orbs, which have drawn off from the cold earth and water, are the temporary gods of the world clustering around the earth, which to the ancient thinker is the central figure.
on Aristotle's Physics
the following fragment is attributed direct to Anaximander:
This fragment remains a mystery because it can be translated in different ways. Simplicius comments that Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), therefore he did not choose one of them as an origin, but something else which generates the opposites without experiencing any decay. He mentions also that Anaximander said all these in poetic terms, meaning that he used the old mythical language. The Goddess Justice (Dike
), appears to keep the order. The quotation is close to the original meanings of the relevant Greek words. The word dike (justice) was probably originally derived from the boundaries of a man's land and transmits metaphorically the notion that somebody must remain into his own sphere, respecting the one of his neighbour. The word adikia
(injustice) means that someone has operated outside of his own sphere, something that could disturb "law and order" (eunomia
). In Homer's Odyssey
eunomia is contrasted with hybris
(arrogance). Arrogance was considered very dangerous because it could break the balance and lead to political instability and finally to the destruction of a city-state.
Aetius
(1st century BC) transmits a different quotation:
Therefore it seems that Anaximander argued about apeiron and this is also noticed by Aristotle
:
Friedrich Nietzsche
claimed that Anaximander was a pessimist and that he viewed all coming to be as an illegitimate emancipation from the eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance. In accordance to this the world of the individual definite objects should perish into the indefinite since anything definite has to eventually return to the indefinite. His ideas had a great influence on many scholars.
Other scholars, e.g. Bertrand Russell
and Maurice Bowra
, didn't deny that Anaximander was the first who used the term apeiron, but claimed that the mysterious fragment is dealing with the balance of opposite forces as central to reality being closer to the quotation transmitted by Simplicius.
There are also other interpretations which try to match both the previous aspects. Apeiron is an abstract, void, something that cannot be described according to the Greek pessimistic belief for death. Death indeed meant "nothingless". The dead live like shadows and there is no return to the real world. Everything generated from apeiron must return there according to the principle genesis-decay. There is a polar attraction between the opposites genesis-decay, arrogance-justice. The existence itself carries a guilt.
Justice has to destroy everything which is born. There is no external limit that can restrict the activities of men, except the destruction. Arrogance is an expression of the chaotic element of human existence and in a way a part of the rebounding mechanism of order, because pushing it to exertions causes destruction which is also a reestablishment.
), while the second one dealing with mutual changes and the balance of the opposites as central to reality is physical. The same paradox existed in the Greek way of thought. The Greeks believed that each individual had unlimitable potentialities both in brain and in heart, an outlook which called a man to live at the top of his powers. But that there was a limit to his most violent ambitions, that arrogance-injustice (hybris or adikia) could disturb the harmony and balance. In that case justice (dike
) would destroy him to reestablish the order. These ideas are obvious in later Greek philosophers. Philolaus
(5th century BC) mentions that nature constituted and is organized with the world from unlimitable (Greek: ἄπειρα apeira, plural of apeiron) and limitable. Everything which exists in the world contains the unlimited (apeiron) and the limited. Something similar is mentioned by Plato
: Nothing can exist if it doesn't contain continually and simultaneously the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite.
Some doctrines existing in Western thought, still transmit some of the original ideas: "God ordained that all men shall die", "Death is a common debt". The Greek word adikia (injustice) transmits the notion that someone has operated outside of his own sphere, without respecting the one of his neighbour. Therefore he commits hybris. The relative English word arrogance (claim as one's own without justification - Latin verb: arrogare), is very close to the original meaning, "Nothing in excess."
(in particular, Philolaus
), the universe had begun as an apeiron, but at some point it inhaled the void from outside, filling the cosmos with vacuous bubbles that split the world into many different parts. For Anaxagoras
, the initial apeiron had begun to rotate rapidly under the control of a godlike Nous
(Mind), and the great speed of the rotation caused the universe to break up into many fragments. However, since all individual things had originated from the same apeiron, all things must contain parts of all other things—for instance, a tree must also contain tiny pieces of sharks, moons, and grains of sand. This alone explains how one object can be transformed into another, since each thing already contains all other things in germ.
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
word meaning unlimited, infinite or indefinite from ἀ- a-, "without" and πεῖραρ peirar, "end, limit", the Ionic Greek
Ionic Greek
Ionic Greek was a subdialect of the Attic–Ionic dialect group of Ancient Greek .-History:Ionic dialect appears to have spread originally from the Greek mainland across the Aegean at the time of the Dorian invasions, around the 11th Century B.C.By the end of the Greek Dark Ages in the 5th Century...
form of πέρας peras, "end, limit, boundary".
Apeiron as an origin
The apeiron is central to the cosmologicalCosmology
Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...
theory created by Anaximander
Anaximander
Anaximander was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales...
in the 6th century BC. Anaximander's work is mostly lost. From the few existing fragments, we learn that he believed the beginning or ultimate reality (arche
Arche
Arche is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'sovereignty', 'domination' as extended meanings. This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'...
) is eternal and infinite, or boundless (apeiron), subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived. Apeiron generated the opposites, hot-cold, wet-dry etc., which acted on the creation of the world. Everything is generated from apeiron and then it is destroyed there according to necessity. He believed that infinite worlds are generated from apeiron and then they are destroyed there again.
His ideas were influenced by the Greek mythical
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
tradition and by his teacher Thales
Thales
Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...
(7th-6th century BC). Searching for some universal principle, Anaximander retained the traditional religious assumption that there was a cosmic order and tried to explain it rationally, using the old mythical language which ascribed divine control on various spheres of reality. This language was more suitable for a society which could see gods everywhere; therefore the first glimmerings of laws of nature were themselves derived from divine laws. The Greeks believed that the universal principles could also be applied to human societies. The word nomos (law) may originally have meant natural law and been used later to mean man-made law.
Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction, adopting apeiron as the origin of all things, because it is completely indefinite. This is a further transition from the previous existing mythical way of thought to the new rational
Rationalism
In epistemology and in its modern sense, rationalism is "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification" . In more technical terms, it is a method or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive"...
way of thought which is the main characteristic of the archaic period
Archaic period in Greece
The Archaic period in Greece was a period of ancient Greek history that followed the Greek Dark Ages. This period saw the rise of the polis and the founding of colonies, as well as the first inklings of classical philosophy, theatre in the form of tragedies performed during Dionysia, and written...
(8th-6th century BC). This way of thought is a result of the new political conditions in the Greek city states during the 6th century BC.
Roots
In the mythical GreekGreece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
cosmogony
Cosmogony
Cosmogony, or cosmogeny, is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence or origin of the universe, or about how reality came to be. The word comes from the Greek κοσμογονία , from κόσμος "cosmos, the world", and the root of γίνομαι / γέγονα "to be born, come about"...
of Hesiod
Hesiod
Hesiod was a Greek oral poet generally thought by scholars to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. His is the first European poetry in which the poet regards himself as a topic, an individual with a distinctive role to play. Ancient authors credited him and...
(8th-7th century BC) the beginning (arche) of the universe is Chaos
Chaos (mythology)
Chaos refers to the formless or void state preceding the creation of the universe or cosmos in the Greek creation myths, more specifically the initial "gap" created by the original separation of heaven and earth....
, the void considered as a divine primordial condition. This is described as a large gap where there are the sources and ends of the earth, sky, sea and Tartarus
Tartarus
In classic mythology, below Uranus , Gaia , and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros . It is a deep, gloomy place, a pit, or an abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides beneath the underworld. In the Gorgias, Plato In classic mythology, below Uranus (sky), Gaia (earth), and Pontus...
. One can name it also abyss
Abyss (religion)
Abyss refers to a bottomless pit, to the underworld, to the deepest ocean floor, or to hell.The English word "abyss" derives from the late Latin abyssimus through French abisme , hence the poetic form "abysm", with examples dating to 1616 and earlier to rhyme with "time"...
(having no bottom). Thales believed that the origin or first principle was water. Pherecydes of Syros
Pherecydes of Syros
Pherecydes of Syros was a Greek thinker from the island of Syros, of the 6th century BC. Pherecydes authored the Pentemychos or Heptamychos, one of the first attested prose works in Greek literature, which formed an important bridge between mythic and pre-Socratic thought.- Life :Very little is...
(6th century BC) probably called the water also Chaos and this is not placed at the very beginning.
In the creation stories of Near East the primordial world is described formless and empty. The only existing thing prior to creation was the water abyss. The Babylonian cosmology Enuma Elish
Enûma Elish
The is the Babylonian creation myth . It was recovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh , and published by George Smith in 1876.The Enûma Eliš has about a thousand lines and is recorded in Old Babylonian on seven clay tablets, each holding...
describes the earliest stage of the universe as one of watery chaos and something similar is described in Genesis.
In the Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
cosmogony which is similar to the Vedic
Vedic
Vedic may refer to:* the Vedas, the oldest preserved Indic texts** Vedic Sanskrit, the language of these texts** Vedic period, during which these texts were produced** Vedic pantheon of gods mentioned in Vedas/vedic period...
(Hiranyagarbha
Hiranyagarbha
Image:Hinducosm Map1.svg|thumb|Click an area to go there. This is one of many material universes, Brahmāṇḍa, which expand from Mahā Viṣṇu when He breathes.|400px|alt=One Brahmāṇḍa, with Garbhodakaśāyī-Viṣṇurect 216 61 277 80 Brahma...
) the initial state of the universe was an absolute darkness.
Hesiod made an abstraction, because his original chaos is a void, something completely indefinite. In his opinion the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate. The indefiniteness is spatial in early usages as in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
(indefinite sea). A fragment from Xenophanes
Xenophanes
of Colophon was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and social and religious critic. Xenophanes life was one of travel, having left Ionia at the age of 25 he continued to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years. Some scholars say he lived in exile in Siciliy...
(6th century BC) shows the transition from chaos to apeiron: "The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit reaches down to the unlimited. (i.e. the Apeiron)". Either apeiron meant the 'spatial indefinite' and was implied to be indefinite in kind, or Anaximander intended it primarily 'that which is indefinite in kind' but assumed it also to be of unlimited extent and duration.
Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction making apeiron the principle of all things and some scholars saw a gap between the existing mythical and the new rational way of thought (rationalism). But if we follow the course, we will see that there is not such an abrupt break with the previous thought. The basic elements of nature, water
Water (classical element)
Water is one of the elements in ancient Greek philosophy, in the Asian Indian system Panchamahabhuta, and in the Chinese cosmological and physiological system Wu Xing...
, air
Air (classical element)
Air is often seen as a universal power or pure substance. Its supposed fundamental importance to life can be seen in words such as aspire, inspire, perspire and spirit, all derived from the Latin spirare.-Greek and Roman tradition:...
, fire
Fire (classical element)
Fire has been an important part of all cultures and religions from pre-history to modern day and was vital to the development of civilization. It has been regarded in many different contexts throughout history, but especially as a metaphysical constant of the world.-Greek and Roman tradition:Fire...
, earth
Earth (classical element)
Earth, home and origin of humanity, has often been worshipped in its own right with its own unique spiritual tradition.-European tradition:Earth is one of the four classical elements in ancient Greek philosophy and science. It was commonly associated with qualities of heaviness, matter and the...
, which the first Greek philosophers believed that composed the world, represent in fact the mythical primordial forces. The collision of these forces produced the cosmic harmony according to the Greek cosmogony (Hesiod). Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between these elements, therefore he chose something else (indefinite in kind) which could generate the others without experiencing any decay.
There is also a fragment attributed to his teacher Thales: "What is divine? What has no origin, nor end."This probably led his student to his final decision for apeiron, because the divinity applied to it implies that it always existed. The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality and Anaximander's description was in terms appropriate to this conception. This arche is called "eternal and ageless" (Hippolitus I,6,I;DK B2).
Creation of the world
The apeiron has generally been understood as a sort of primal chaosSubstance theory
Substance theory, or substance attribute theory, is an ontological theory about objecthood, positing that a substance is distinct from its properties. A thing-in-itself is a property-bearer that must be distinguished from the properties it bears....
. It acts as the substratum supporting opposites such as hot and cold, wet and dry, and directed the movement of things, by which there grew up all of the host of shapes and differences which are found in the world.
Out of the vague and limitless body there sprang a central mass — this earth of ours — cylindrical in shape. A sphere of fire surrounded the air around the earth and had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree. When it broke, it created the sun, the moon and the stars. The first animals were generated in the water. When they came to earth they were transmuted by the effect of the sun. The human being sprung from some other animal, which originally was similar to a fish. The blazing orbs, which have drawn off from the cold earth and water, are the temporary gods of the world clustering around the earth, which to the ancient thinker is the central figure.
Interpretations
In the commentary of SimpliciusSimplicius of Cilicia
Simplicius of Cilicia, was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He was among the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into...
on Aristotle's Physics
Physics (Aristotle)
The Physics of Aristotle is one of the foundational books of Western science and philosophy...
the following fragment is attributed direct to Anaximander:
Whence things have their origin, there their destruction happens as it is ordained (Greek: kata to chreon = according to the debt). For they give justice and compensation to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.
This fragment remains a mystery because it can be translated in different ways. Simplicius comments that Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between the four elements (earth, air, water, fire), therefore he did not choose one of them as an origin, but something else which generates the opposites without experiencing any decay. He mentions also that Anaximander said all these in poetic terms, meaning that he used the old mythical language. The Goddess Justice (Dike
Dike (mythology)
In ancient Greek culture, Dikē was the spirit of moral order and fair judgement based on immemorial custom, in the sense of socially enforced norms and conventional rules. According to Hesiod In ancient Greek culture, Dikē (Greek: Δίκη, English translation: "justice") was the spirit of moral...
), appears to keep the order. The quotation is close to the original meanings of the relevant Greek words. The word dike (justice) was probably originally derived from the boundaries of a man's land and transmits metaphorically the notion that somebody must remain into his own sphere, respecting the one of his neighbour. The word adikia
Adikia
In Greek mythology, Adikia is the goddess and personification of injustice. She is an ugly figure who is depicted being throttled by Dike, the goddess of justice, on the Kypselos Chest....
(injustice) means that someone has operated outside of his own sphere, something that could disturb "law and order" (eunomia
Eunomia (goddess)
Eunomia was a minor Greek goddess of law and legislation, and one of the daughters of Themis and Zeus.-Mythology:...
). In Homer's Odyssey
Odyssey
The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
eunomia is contrasted with hybris
Hubris
Hubris , also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power....
(arrogance). Arrogance was considered very dangerous because it could break the balance and lead to political instability and finally to the destruction of a city-state.
Aetius
Aetius (philosopher)
Aetius was a 1st or 2nd century doxographer and Eclectic philosopher.None of Aetius' works survive today, but he solves a mystery about two major compilations of philosophical quotes...
(1st century BC) transmits a different quotation:
Everything is generated from apeiron and there its destruction happens. Infinite worlds are generated and they are destructed there again. And he says (Anaximander) why this is apeiron. Because only then genesis and decay will never stop.
Therefore it seems that Anaximander argued about apeiron and this is also noticed by Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
:
The belief that there is something apeiron stems from the idea that only then genesis and decay will never stop, when that from which is taken what is generated is apeiron.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
claimed that Anaximander was a pessimist and that he viewed all coming to be as an illegitimate emancipation from the eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance. In accordance to this the world of the individual definite objects should perish into the indefinite since anything definite has to eventually return to the indefinite. His ideas had a great influence on many scholars.
Other scholars, e.g. Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
and Maurice Bowra
Maurice Bowra
Sir Cecil Maurice Bowra was an English classical scholar and academic, known for his wit. He was Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1938 to 1970, and served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 1951 to 1954.-Birth and boyhood:...
, didn't deny that Anaximander was the first who used the term apeiron, but claimed that the mysterious fragment is dealing with the balance of opposite forces as central to reality being closer to the quotation transmitted by Simplicius.
There are also other interpretations which try to match both the previous aspects. Apeiron is an abstract, void, something that cannot be described according to the Greek pessimistic belief for death. Death indeed meant "nothingless". The dead live like shadows and there is no return to the real world. Everything generated from apeiron must return there according to the principle genesis-decay. There is a polar attraction between the opposites genesis-decay, arrogance-justice. The existence itself carries a guilt.
The idea that the fact of existence by itself carries along an incurable guilt is Greek (Theognis 327) and anybody claims that surpasses it, commits arrogance and therefore he becomes guilty. The first half of the 6th century is a period of great social instability in Miletus, the city state where Anaximander lives. Any attempt of excess leads to exaggerations and each exaggeration must be corrected. All these have to be paid according to the debt. The things give justice to one another with the process of time.
Justice has to destroy everything which is born. There is no external limit that can restrict the activities of men, except the destruction. Arrogance is an expression of the chaotic element of human existence and in a way a part of the rebounding mechanism of order, because pushing it to exertions causes destruction which is also a reestablishment.
Influence on Greek and Western thought
We may assume that the contradiction in the different interpretations is because Anaximander combined two different ways of thought. The first one dealing with apeiron is metaphysical (and can lead to monismMonism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
), while the second one dealing with mutual changes and the balance of the opposites as central to reality is physical. The same paradox existed in the Greek way of thought. The Greeks believed that each individual had unlimitable potentialities both in brain and in heart, an outlook which called a man to live at the top of his powers. But that there was a limit to his most violent ambitions, that arrogance-injustice (hybris or adikia) could disturb the harmony and balance. In that case justice (dike
Dike (mythology)
In ancient Greek culture, Dikē was the spirit of moral order and fair judgement based on immemorial custom, in the sense of socially enforced norms and conventional rules. According to Hesiod In ancient Greek culture, Dikē (Greek: Δίκη, English translation: "justice") was the spirit of moral...
) would destroy him to reestablish the order. These ideas are obvious in later Greek philosophers. Philolaus
Philolaus
Philolaus was a Greek Pythagorean and Presocratic philosopher. He argued that all matter is composed of limiting and limitless things, and that the universe is determined by numbers. He is credited with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe.-Life:Philolaus is...
(5th century BC) mentions that nature constituted and is organized with the world from unlimitable (Greek: ἄπειρα apeira, plural of apeiron) and limitable. Everything which exists in the world contains the unlimited (apeiron) and the limited. Something similar is mentioned by Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
: Nothing can exist if it doesn't contain continually and simultaneously the limited and the unlimited, the definite and the indefinite.
Some doctrines existing in Western thought, still transmit some of the original ideas: "God ordained that all men shall die", "Death is a common debt". The Greek word adikia (injustice) transmits the notion that someone has operated outside of his own sphere, without respecting the one of his neighbour. Therefore he commits hybris. The relative English word arrogance (claim as one's own without justification - Latin verb: arrogare), is very close to the original meaning, "Nothing in excess."
Other pre-Socratic philosophers' ideas about apeiron
Other pre-Socratic philosophers had different theories of the apeiron. For the PythagoreansPythagoreanism
Pythagoreanism was the system of esoteric and metaphysical beliefs held by Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans, who were considerably influenced by mathematics. Pythagoreanism originated in the 5th century BCE and greatly influenced Platonism...
(in particular, Philolaus
Philolaus
Philolaus was a Greek Pythagorean and Presocratic philosopher. He argued that all matter is composed of limiting and limitless things, and that the universe is determined by numbers. He is credited with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe.-Life:Philolaus is...
), the universe had begun as an apeiron, but at some point it inhaled the void from outside, filling the cosmos with vacuous bubbles that split the world into many different parts. For Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first philosopher to bring philosophy from Ionia to Athens. He attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the sun, which he described as a fiery mass larger than...
, the initial apeiron had begun to rotate rapidly under the control of a godlike Nous
Nous
Nous , also called intellect or intelligence, is a philosophical term for the faculty of the human mind which is described in classical philosophy as necessary for understanding what is true or real, very close in meaning to intuition...
(Mind), and the great speed of the rotation caused the universe to break up into many fragments. However, since all individual things had originated from the same apeiron, all things must contain parts of all other things—for instance, a tree must also contain tiny pieces of sharks, moons, and grains of sand. This alone explains how one object can be transformed into another, since each thing already contains all other things in germ.
See also
- ArcheArcheArche is a Greek word with primary senses 'beginning', 'origin' or 'first cause' and 'power', 'sovereignty', 'domination' as extended meanings. This list is extended to 'ultimate underlying substance' and 'ultimate undemonstrable principle'...
- IdealismIdealismIn philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
- InfinityInfinityInfinity is a concept in many fields, most predominantly mathematics and physics, that refers to a quantity without bound or end. People have developed various ideas throughout history about the nature of infinity...
- Material monismMaterial monismMaterial monism is a Presocratic belief which provides an explanation of the physical world by saying that all of the world's objects are composed of a single element...
- Neutral MonismNeutral monismNeutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally...
- TheogonyTheogonyThe Theogony is a poem by Hesiod describing the origins and genealogies of the gods of the ancient Greeks, composed circa 700 BC...