Journal of the History of Ideas

Although we have only one extant fragment from the sixth-century bc Milesian philosopher, Anaximander, a number of doxographies enable us to reconstruct his ideas concerning the origin and evolution of the present order of things, that is, what one may call an historia (or investigation) of the type. What is distinctly important about the Milesian’s historia is that, being the first rational account of this type to have come down to us, it helps us to understand just what is involved in the movement from a mythopoeic to a speculative account. Certainly one of the most interesting facets of Anaximander’s system is his cosmological model, which places an immobile earth at the center of the celestial sphere. The reason given for this is that, the earth being equidistant from all the points of the celestial circumference, there is no reason for it to move up rather than down, or left rather than right. In sum, the Milesian’s reasoning behind the position of the earth appears to be mathematical. It is therefore not surprising that this is often considered Anaximander’s greatest achievement in cosmology; for it liberated the mind (or should have) from the idea that the earth needed a material support. This is not the only role that the earth played in his cosmology. The earth is also the most important element in determining the sizes and distances of the other celestial bodies; that is, their sizes and distances are analogous to the dimensions of the earth. This may be deduced from a certain number of doxographies which tell us that the Milesian conceived the shape of the earth as that of a column drum three times as broad as it is high and that the distance of the stars, of the moon and of the sun (or their respective rings) from the center of the earth are in a ratio of 1:2:3. It appears that Anaximander realized his universe according to a mathematical plan following the series 3. This hypothesis, first formulated by Paul Tannery in the late nineteenth century, has, in spite of its conjectural nature, [End Page 1] been adopted by the vast majority of commentators. However, they are far from agreeing about the origin of the numbers and consequently about the origin of the cosmological model. There are, in the main, four hypotheses: (1) they are the result of a sacred inspiration; (2) they are the result of an astronomical inspiration; (3) they are the result of an architectural inspiration; (4) they are the result of a political inspiration. I hope to show that the only valid hypothesis is the political one, but not for reasons hitherto evoked. I will argue that the numbers which translate the sizes and distances of the heavenly bodies in relation to the earth correspond in some way or other to the three social groups of which the polis of Anaximander’s time was composed: the aristocracy, the (new) middle class and the peasantry (or poor). Anaximander’s cosmological model reflects what he saw as the only possible way of ridding the polis of the political dissention of his time: isonomia. Thus, each of the three social groups would correspond to one of the three celestial rings whose numbers translate the same relation of equality, symmetry, and reciprocity (1:2:3) in relation to the center of the universe, the earth, as the three social groups in relation to the agora. Consequently, since Anaximander, like Plato, is advocating a socio-political model which has yet to be realized, he may be considered as the first known utopian.

The aim of an historia of the type is to explain how the present order of things came into existence. A work of this type begins with a cosmogony, strictly speaking, then go on to an anthropogony and, finally, to a politogony. The first explains the origin and development of the universe, the second, those of humanity, and the third, those of the society in which it lives.¹

This is completely compatible with a linguistic analysis of the word which shows (1) that the fundamental and...