ANAXIMANDER AND RUSSELL’S DARWINISM

This is my second Anaximandrian entry, devoted to his examination by Bertrand Russell, whom I hold in very high esteem as an essential original thinker.

Bertrand Russell finds him far more interesting than the other two Milesian philosophers, namely, Thales and Anaximenes. Here is how Russell writes about Anaximander in his History of Western Philosophy:

He held that all things come from a single primal substance, but that it is not water, as Thales held, or any other of the substances we know. It is infinite, eternal, and ageless, and “it encompasses all the worlds,” for he thought that our world is only one of many. The primal substance is transformed into various substances, with which we are familiar, and these are transformed into each other. As to this, he makes an important and remarkable statement (which is that famous extant fragment which we were talking about earlier): Into that from which things take their rise they pass away once more as is ordained, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.

What follows next is Russell’s interpretation of this fragment, which interpretation will be very interesting to compare with some other interpretations, and we are going to do it presently, but first let us have Russell’s version, which we shall quote to the very end of his Anaximander segment:

The idea of justice, both cosmic and human, played a part in Greek religion and philosophy, which is not at all easy for a modern to understand; indeed, our word justice hardly expresses what is meant, but it is hard to find any other word which would be preferable. The thought that Anaximander is expressing seems to be this: there should be a certain proportion of fire, of earth, and of water in the world, but each element, god, is perpetually attempting to enlarge its empire. But there is a kind of necessity, or natural law, perpetually redressing the balance; where has been fire, for example, there are ashes, which are earth. This conception of justice--of not overstepping eternally fixed bounds--was one of the most profound of Greek beliefs. The gods were subject to justice just as much as men were, but this supreme power was not itself personal, and was not a supreme God. (Why not? After all, this is only a matter of definitions, and, by the same token, it can be called God with no less right than Russell’s denial.)

Anaximander had an argument to prove that the primal substance could not be water, or any other known element. If one of them were primal, it would conquer the others. Aristotle reports him as saying that these known elements are in opposition to one another. Air is cold, water is moist, and fire is hot. And, therefore, if any one of them were infinite, the rest would have ceased to be by this time. The primal substance, thus, must be neutral in this cosmic strife.

There was an eternal motion, in the course of which was brought about the origin of the worlds. They (the worlds) were not created, as in Jewish or Christian theology, but evolved. There was evolution also in the animal kingdom. Living creatures arose from the moist element as it was evaporated by the sun. Man, like every other animal, descended from fishes. He must be derived from animals of a different sort, because he could not have survived, owing to his long infancy, originally as he is now. (I suspect that Russell must be fantasizing the Darwinian evolution here more than meditating on Anaximander’s legacy.)

Anaximander was filled with a scientific curiosity. He is said to have been the first man who made a map. He held that the earth is shaped like a cylinder. He is variously reported as saying the sun is as large as the earth, or twenty-seven times as large, or twenty-eight times as large. Where he is original, he is scientific and rationalistic. (Generally speaking, I find Russell rather disingenuous and opinionated, as well as not in his best form, in this discussion of Anaximander, but his opinion is still valuable to us, to put it in the row of other outstanding opinions, in order to make their comparison.)