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Anaxagoras and the Parts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

A. L. Peck
A. L. Peck*
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The great number of contradictory statements which confront us when we examine the various explanations of Anaxagoras' philosophy make it more than usually important to decide what is to be admitted as first-hand evidence and what is not. I purpose, then, to begin by accepting the barest minimum of data, and I shall try to exclude any direct comments upon Anaxagoras' work by later writers. Sufficient justification for such a course may be found in the bewildering masses of confusion which have gathered around his teaching.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 1926 , pp. 57 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1926

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References

page 57 note 1 Cf. pp. 66, 68.

page 58 note 1 Hence a thing is always there, not merely in the sense that the materials out of which it will be or was composed are always there, but it is always there as such: the pieces into which you divide it will still be it and not something else. E.g. salt will always be salt; you cannot divide it so far as to get a piece so small that the next division will give N and Cl, neither of which is salt. (I do not mean to imply that Anaxagoras would actually have affirmed this of salt.)

page 59 note 1 This, I think, refers to the ‘Air,’ not to the Earth, which the Editors supply, reading ‘where <the Earth> is now’: cf. Hippol. Diels A 42; and what follows (fr. 16; see above). See also later, pp. 67, 68.

page 60 note 1 Curiously enough, although Anaxagoras made his name by ‘setting Mind over’ the physical world at large, he was chiefly interested in organic physics, and therefore there is probably some justification for Plato's complaint that he ‘dropped’ Mind after the initial move-ment of the world; although, of course, this is quite clearly inconsistent with Anaxagoras' own words in frs. 12, 14 (tr. on p. 62). Cf. Arist, Met. A 984b 15 (tr. p. 61)Google Scholar.

page 61 note 1 See below, p. 67 and following.

page 64 note 1 The meaning of this phrase is of course disputed; as it stands it is clearly inconsistent with the next quotation.

page 65 note 1 It is not necessary to suppose that Anaxagoras used this term, but only that it was already n se before Aristotle.

page 66 note 1 Thus each ἡμοιοερὴς will be an example in practice of the doctrine of ἡμοιοερεια.