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Everything is in everything. That odd-sounding slogan belonged to Anaxagoras, the Greek thinker this lecture from Academy of Ideas brings into focus. His real legacy, however, was bigger: he was the first philosopher to split the universe cleanly into mind and matter. The video follows his argument that a noble, ordering intelligence set the cosmos in motion, then let it run like a machine — an idea that delighted Plato and frustrated Socrates. It closes with a clear look at two rival visions of reality, and how Anaxagoras somehow combined both.
Full Video Transcript
The Presocratics Lecture 6, Anaxagoras.
In this lecture we will discuss Anaxagoras, another post-Parmeneidian Presocratic philosopher who, like Empedocles,
had to construct his philosophical account of the universe without invoking the notion of things coming to be, passing away, and arising from what they are not.
As we will see, Anaxagoras abided by Parmenides’ law by constructing an intriguing and surprising theory regarding the nature of matter.
However, Anaxagoras’ name has gone down in history not for his theory of matter, but for being the first philosopher to introduce the distinction between mind and matter.
In this lecture, we will investigate both his theory of matter and his division of the universe into mind and matter.
To conclude the lecture, we will discuss the difference between a mechanistic and teleological view of the universe, and explain how Anaxagoras’ philosophy developed both points of view.
To commence this lecture, we must attend to the personality of Anaxagoras.
For like all the pre-Socratic philosophers, he was an extremely unique and interesting individual.
Anaxagoras was born into a wealthy aristocratic family, but showed no interest in money,
and in fact shunned his hefty inheritance,
and spent his life devoted to philosophy instead of striving after wealth and honors.
There is a tale that Anaxagoras was once asked why it is better to be born than not to be born,
He replied that being alive is better than not being alive because
it enables one to study the heavens and the whole universe.
It was common in ancient Greece for citizens to take great pride in the city or polis,
which they called home.
In fact, when naming a Greek individual, it was traditional to include the city they were from,
as this was thought to form an integral part of the individual’s identity.
Moreover, the Greeks prided themselves on being the most advanced race,
and considered other civilizations as less than human, frequently referring to them as barbarians.
Anaxagoras was unique in that he did not take great pride in being Greek,
nor did he identify himself with the city he was born in.
These were only arbitrary, all-too-human conventions, he thought.
Instead, he regarded himself as a citizen of the universe.
When asked why he failed to show any concern for his homeland,
Anaxagoras replied that he indeed did show concern, and pointing to the sky above said,
I honor her indeed, and am deeply concerned for her.
As we saw in the last lecture, Empedocles asserted that there are four different categories of particles, or roots,
earth, water, air, and fire, which make up everything in the universe.
Empedocles thought, for example, that bone is composed of four parts fire, two parts water, and two parts earth.
Now Empedocles believed himself to be abiding by Parmenides’ law against becoming, which stated, among other things, that something cannot arise from what it is not.
Or in other words, one thing cannot morph or transform itself into another thing.
While on the surface it may appear that he successfully adhered to this doctrine, under closer examination it is clear that Empedocles violated Parmenides’ law.
For example, in claiming that bone comes into existence when fire, water, and earth come
together, he is asserting that bone becomes or emerges from what it is not.
Bone is not fire, water, nor earth, and therefore cannot emerge from these elements,
nor can it arise through their interaction with each other.
Anaxagoras understood the folly which beset Empedocles.
For how can hair come out of not hair, and flesh out of not flesh, he asked?
Clearly, if one wants to abide by Parmenides’ law, hair cannot come out of not-hair, nor can anything come out of what it is not.
Therefore, in order to explain how material things appear to transform into other things, Anaxagoras boldly stated that everything is in everything.
What does this statement mean?
Surprisingly, in saying everything is in everything, Anaxagoras meant literally that everything is in everything.
and he used digestion as an example to explain such an idea.
For example, when we eat an apple, the contents of the apple are assimilated into our body
and literally become a part of us.
However, according to Parmenides, it would make no sense to say that the apple is transformed into,
let’s say for simplicity’s sake, blood or bone,
for that would mean that blood and bone arose from what they are not, that being an apple.
Instead, Anaxagoras claimed that blood and bone, and everything else, pre-exist in an apple,
and when ingested the blood and bone that are in the apple become incorporated into our body.
Explaining this idea of Anaxagoras’, Aristotle wrote,
Anaxagoras plausibly says that the flesh from the food is added to our flesh.
If everything is in everything, then how is it that there are different things in the world?
To put the question differently, if everything exists in gold, and everything also exists in bone, then why are gold and bone qualitatively very different substances?
In order to explain this, Anaxagoras invoked what is commonly called the principle of predominance.
While everything is in everything, Anaxagoras thought each thing is what it is, as a result of whatever exists in the highest concentration within it.
it. So while there is indeed flesh, blood, hair, grass, wood, and everything else in
gold, all of these substances exist only in minute concentrations, and hence are
perceptually indiscernible. On the other hand, within gold, gold exists by far in
the highest concentration, which is why gold takes on the characteristics it
does, even though everything exists within it. Explaining this idea, Anaxagoras
wrote,
Nothing is like anything else, but those things are and were most plainly each thing, of which
there are most in it.
As we mentioned at the outset of this lecture, Anaxagoras’ most heralded contribution to
the history of philosophy was his division of the universe into mind and matter.
Earlier pre-Socratic philosophers were hylazoists, in that they thought matter was imbued with
life and intelligence, and hence was capable of initiating its own movement.
However, this notion was inherited from earlier mythological beliefs, and was slowly discarded
by the later Presocratics.
When the belief that matter could initiate its own movement became untenable, it was
necessary to account for the movement and transformation of the material universe by
postulating a separate external cause.
This external cause which moves matter, Anaxagoras asserted is nous, which is Greek for mind.
Mind is a substance separate and independent from matter, standing over and above matter
so to speak.
Mind is an intelligent force which governs the movement of the material universe.
Anaxagoras wrote,
It is the finest and purest of all things, and has judgment of everything, and greatest
power, and everything that has life, both greater and smaller.
these mind controls. Our own mind is a reflection of the universal mind operating through our
material bodies. Mind is the life force of everything. Without it, the universe would be
inert, static, and wholly devoid of life and intelligence. Anaxagoras also claimed mind to
be responsible for the birth of the cosmos. In the beginning, he claimed, matter, without an
external cause to move it, remained still for an infinite period of time. It was only when mind
sprang to action and acted on the inert state of matter, that movement was initiated and
the creation of the cosmos began.
We must now turn our attention to the difference between a teleological and mechanistic view
of the universe.
As we will see, Anaxagoras was unique in that his philosophical vision combined both a teleological
and a mechanistic view, much to the chagrin of later philosophers.
The word teleology comes from the Greek word telos, which means end or purpose.
Those who assert a teleological view of the universe believe there is a purpose to existence,
some end the universe and everything in it is striving towards.
In other words, teleologists claim that there is some future state which exerts a causal
influence on things in the here and now, impelling them forward so as to realize this future
state.
assert a mechanistic view of the universe, on the other hand, don’t believe there is
a purpose to the universe, and thus deny the existence of some future state which impels
things to move or evolve in a certain direction. Mechanists instead view the universe and everything
in it solely as the product of past forces. Anaxagoras was unique in that his philosophical
account of the universe combined both a teleological and mechanistic view. In the beginning, he
thought, mind acted as a teleological principle, as it set matter in motion for a purpose or
end, that being to produce an ordered cosmos. However, the rest of his philosophy is saturated
with mechanistic principles, as he explains the development of the universe and the workings
of nature as the result of purely physical and mechanistic causes.
In claiming that a teleological principle set the universe in motion, but that after
this initial push by mind. The universe was left to unfold and evolve solely according
to physical and mechanical laws. Anaxagoras utilized what the philosopher Lewis Hicks
called a eutaxiological view. Anaxagoras’ mixture resulted in mixed reactions from the
prominent Greek philosophers who followed him. As we mentioned, Plato utilized Anaxagoras’
designation of mind as an intelligent causal force in the universe to support his own teleological
arguments. However, as David Sedley explained, Plato and other teleological thinkers could not
accept Anaxagoras’ eutaxiological view. Plato, like nearly every other thinker in and well after
antiquity, associated teleology with conscious purpose. To make the world a purposive structure
just is to posit an intelligent mind as its cause. True, the intelligent mind could have created the
world and then left it to run itself mechanically, but no ancient thinker, after at any rate
Anaxagoras, was ready to contemplate a split-level theory of that kind. Socrates, who was committed
to a wholly teleological view and thought everything in the universe was constructed
by an intelligent designer, was said to have been extremely excited when he heard that
Anaxagoras used mind to explain the order and development of the universe. However,
Socrates is reported to have said,
My extravagant expectations were all dashed to the ground
when I went on and found that the man made no use of mind at all.
He ascribed no causal power whatever to it in the ordering of things,
but to airs and ethers and waters, and a host of other strange things.
Aristotle thought that in his postulation of mind as
the causal force responsible for the birth of the universe,
Anaxagoras, in his words,
stood out like a single sober man by comparison with the wild assertions of his predecessors.
Yet, much to the dismay of Aristotle, he discovered that Anaxagoras uses mind to account for the formation of the world,
and whenever he is at a loss to explain why anything necessarily is, he drags it in.
But in other cases, he makes anything rather than mind the cause.
Despite his mixture of teleological and mechanistic principles to explain the birth and development of the universe,
Anaxagoras is widely considered the first philosopher to introduce the concept of a
teleological principle which is responsible for the birth and initial ordering of the
world. And along with being the first philosopher to introduce the division of mind and matter,
he is rightly considered a highly significant philosopher in the history of philosophy.
In the next lecture we will finish this series on the Presocratics by discussing Democritus,
who, as we will see, wholly rejected a teleological view of things with his assertion that the
universe is nothing but atoms and void.
Source: Academy of Ideas