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Anaximander was a Presocratic philosopher born in Miletus, Asia Minor. He founded a colony called Apollonia on the coast if the Black Sea and was the first who dared to write a treatise in prose called "On Nature".
According to fragmentary reports from other philosophers such as Aristotle and Theophrastus, the first Greek philosophers were searching for the origin of all things. Anaximander speculated that all matter results from the distillation of hot, cold, dry, and wet elements from apeirwn (the Boundless), an infinite, intelligent, living whole.
This apparent introduction of the Boundless seems to have been atypical of Greek thought until that time, usually occupied with limit, symmetry and harmony. Thus, some scholars suspect pre-existing influences (possibly eastern) on Anaximander's ideas.
The Boundless argument in brief is that -
1) The Boundless has no origin.
2) The origin must be Boundless.
3) Any limited concepts would have 'long since' reconciled leaving only the Boundless.
Anaximander believed that the eternal movement of the Boundless caused the origin of the heavens. It is said elsewhere that, 'all the heavens and the worlds within them' have sprung from "some boundless nature.' His language is convoluted by poetic descriptions that have given rise to further speculations of their meanings. For example -
"A germ, pregnant with hot and cold, was separated off from the eternal, whereupon out of the germ a sphere of fire grew around the vapor that surrounds the earth like a bark around a tree."
There are authors who have quite anachronistically seen here a kind of foreshadowing of the Kant-Laplace theory of the origin of the solar system.
He boldly asserts that the earth floats free in the center if the universe unsupported by water, pillars or whatever. Anaximander's idea was quite revolutionary for his day, even expressing the sphericity of the earth.
Anaximander also believed in the depth of space and that celestial bodies lie behind one another, which could not have been established by empirical methods such as direct perception. However, he also believed that the stars where closer to the earth than the moon.
He believed that life began from moisture that covered the earth before it was dried up by the sun, believing the first animals were a kind of fish with a thorny skin. Originally men were generated by fish and were fed by in the manner of viviparous shark. The reason for this was that he believed that a child needs long protection in order to survive. Examination of fossil evidence persuaded Anaximander that living beings develop from simpler to more complex forms over time. So here is the origins of evolutionism, not Darwin.
By speculating and arguing about the Boundless Anaximander maybe considered to be the first western metaphysician. Further records on Anaximander and his theories are sketchy at best.
SOURCES:
http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/anaximan.htm
