Anaxagoras

Today in my Greek class I made my students read the difficult but fascinating philosopher Anaxagoras (image from here). This is an example of the sort of thing they had to read:

"Other things include a portion of everything, but mind is infinite and self-powerful and mixed with nothing, but it exists alone itself by itself. For if it were not by itself, but were mixed with anything else, it would include parts of all things, if it were mixed with anything; for a portion of everything exists in everything, as has been said by me before ..."

You're welcome, Greek students.

I really like Anaxagoras' idea of the universe, which is pretty similar to the Ptolemaic universe pictured here. He thought that the cosmos was spinning like a giant centrifuge, sending the light and hot bits out to form the fiery aether, and the dark and cold bits inward to form the earth. He said that the sun and the stars were red-hot rocks circling in space, that the sun gave light to the moon, and that the sun was so large it was "bigger than the whole Peloponnese." Those were some very radical and shocking ideas in 450 BC.