Anaxagoras
c. 500 BCE–c. 428 BCE · Clazomenae
Held that Nous (Mind) orders the cosmos and that 'in everything there is a portion of everything.'
“Mind (Nous) set in order all things that were to be... and arranged them all.”
Did you know?
He Said the Sun Was a Blazing Rock and Was Put on Trial for It
Anaxagoras taught that the Sun was not a god but a glowing lump of red-hot stone, larger than the Peloponnese, and that the stars were distant fiery bodies. In Athens the claim brought a charge of impiety, and he was forced to leave the city.
How we know
Anaxagoras c.500-428 BCE. Ancient sources (Plato's Apology, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch) report he called the Sun an incandescent stone 'larger than the Peloponnese' and the stars fiery bodies; charged with impiety at Athens and withdrew to Lampsacus.
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ClazomenaeIonia (Asia Minor)
What they did here
Born c.500 BCE in the Ionian Greek city of Clazomenae (in Lydia, Asia Minor), per Diogenes Laertius (2.6-7); birth date inferred from his floruit and a reported lifespan of c.72 years.
About Clazomenae
An Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Anaxagoras—the philosopher who brought natural science to Athens and taught that a cosmic Mind set the universe in order.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Anaxagoras’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
Aeschylus, Themistocles, Parmenides, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Antiphon, Socrates, Prodicus, Democritus, Thucydides, Critias, Antisthenes, Aristophanes, Lysias, Andocides, Isocrates, Alcidamas
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Anaxagoras’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.