Atomic Pioneers ----- From Ancient Greece to the 19th Century

Chapter - 2

ANAXAGORAS

Anaxagoras (an-ak-zag'oh-rus), the first teacher if Science in Athens could be called the world's first theoretical physicist. He was born about 500B.c. at Clazomanae, an Ionian city in Asia Minor. He died in 428 B.C. in Lampsacus (now Lapseki, Turkey).

 Biographical Details 

As a young man, Anaxagoras probably moved to a nearby city, Ephesus, then a great center of learning. There he no doubt came under the influence of Heraclitus, the philosopher who thought all matter was a fire. 

Soon after then Persian wars, he moved to Athens. He became a close friend and advisor of Pericles (pear-i-cleez), the most powerful man in Athens. For a while, he was a man of wide influence.

But he was a philosopher and could not understand much fo the Athenians' religious superstition. Because he questioned these superstitions, he was banished from Athens and spent the rest of his life in exile.

Historians call him the man in recorded history who was punished for following his reasons and scientific thought.

Scientific Achievements 

Anaxagoras reasoned that the universe was composed of an infinite variety of seeds. Thes seeds were set into motion and order by the mind, which was subtle fluid that transformed the chaos of the world into the intelligible matter. The composition of these seeds was the same. They were different only in size. 

Through his reasoning alone, Anaxagoras came close to some aspects of modern atomic theories.

Contribution to Atomic Science

Anaxagoras' theories were a compromise between the "single substance" idea of the universe of the mystic philosophers of his native lonia and the "multiple substances" suggestion of the Pythagoreans.