Promoting a new, broadly interdisciplinary horizon for future studies in early Greek philosophy. Dirk L. Couprie, Robert Hahn, and Gerard Naddaf establish the cultural context in which Anaximander's thought developed and in which the origins of Greek philosophy unfolded in its earliest stages. In order to better understand Anaximander's achievement, the authors call our attention to the historical, social, political, technological, cosmological, astronomical, and observational contexts of his thought. Anaximander in Context brings to the forefront of modern debates the importance of cultural context, and the indispensability of images to clarify ancient ideologies.

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle's proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.

This book offers an innovative analysis of the Greek philosopher Anaximander's work. In particular, it presents a completely new interpretation of the key word Apeiron, or boundless, offering readers a deeper understanding of his seminal cosmology and, with it, his unique conception of the origin of the universe. Anaximander traditionally applied Apeiron to designate the origin of everything. The authors' investigation of the extant sources shows, however, that this common view misses the mark. They argue that instead of reading Apeiron as a noun, it should be considered an adjective, with reference to the term phusis (nature), and that the phrase phusis apeiros may express the boundless power of nature, responsible for all creation and growth. The authors also offer an interpretation of Anaximander's cosmogony from a biological perspective: each further step in the differentiation of the phenomenal world is a continuation of the original separation of a fertile seed. This new reading of the first written account of cosmology stresses the central role of the boundless power of nature. It provides philosophers, researchers, and students with a thought-provoking explanation of this early thinker's conception of generation and destruction in the universe.

In Miletus, about 550 B.C., together with our world-picture cosmology was born. This book tells the story. In Part One the reader is introduced in the archaic world-picture of a flat earth with the cupola of the celestial vault onto whichthe celestial bodies are attached. One of the subjects treated in that context is the riddle of the tilted celestial axis. This part also contains an extensive chapter on archaic astronomical instruments.Part Twoshows how Anaximander (610-547 B.C.) blew up this archaic world-picture and replaced it by a new one that is essentially still ours. He taught that the celestial bodies orbit at different distances and that the earth floats unsupported in space. This makes him the founding father of cosmology.Part Threediscusses topics that completed the new picturedescribed by Anaximander. Special attention is paid to the confrontation between Anaxagoras and Aristotle on the question whether the earth is flat or spherical, and on the battlebetween Aristotle and Heraclides Ponticus on the question whether the universe is finite or infinite.

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The first part offers new interpretations of several Presocratic cosmologists and a critical discussion of Aristotle's proofs that the earth is spherical. The second part explains and discusses the ancient Chinese system called gai tian. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.