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Tom Siegfried, contributing correspondent explains, Natural philosopher Anaxagoras promoted the view that phenomena should
be explained by natural processes, not attributed to the actions of the
gods.
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| The philosopher Anaxagoras introduced "the scientific spirit" to Athens 2,500 years ago, planting the seeds of a philosophical tradition that led to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Photo: Yulia Kupeli/Alamy Stock |
It doesn’t appear that anybody has noticed yet, but 2021 marks a rather important anniversary in the history of science and western civilization. It was 2,500 years ago this year that a philosopher named Anaxagoras arrived in Athens, Greece.
Nobody held any celebrations at the time, either. But it was nonetheless an important historical and intellectual landmark. Before Anaxagoras, ancient Greek science (or to be less anachronistic, natural philosophy) hadn’t actually been practiced much in Greece itself. Natural philosophy originated early in the sixth century B.C. at the Greek settlement Miletus in Ionia, the western coast of modern-day Turkey. A second branch of primordial Greek science soon took root in southern Italy after one Ionian, a math fan named Pythagoras, moved there.
Anaxagoras, born in the Ionian town of Clazomenae, was the first natural philosopher to reside in Athens and promote the Ionian philosophical outlook there. As the science historian George Sarton wrote, Anaxagoras “introduced the scientific spirit into Athens.” Soon after, Athens became the western world’s center of philosophical inquiry, as the triumvirate of Socrates, Plato and then Aristotle established philosophy as an essential component of civilized intellectual discourse.
To be honest, there is some doubt about the exact date of Anaxagoras’ move to Athens...
Despite his own considerable intellect, Anaxagoras’ theory of matter was wrong. But his reputation rests on many other contributions to scientific thought. A century ago, Thomas Heath, the eminent scholar of Greek science and math, declared that Anaxagoras was “a great man of science” who “enriched astronomy by one epoch-making discovery”: that the light of the moon is not its own, but a reflection of light from the sun. (Some scholars say he got the idea from Parmenides, but in any case, it is still very deserving for a crater near the moon’s north pole to be named Anaxagoras.)
Source: Science News Magazine
