Skip to content
Wellsprings
Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras

c. 500 BCEc. 428 BCE · Clazomenae

Held that Nous (Mind) orders the cosmos and that 'in everything there is a portion of everything.'

See Anaxagoras’s journey on the map →
Mind (Nous) set in order all things that were to be... and arranged them all.
Anaxagoras, fr. DK59B12, preserved verbatim by Simplicius, In Aristotelis Physica 156.13ff.

Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→

Stop 1 of 4500 BCEBorn

ClazomenaeIonia (Asia Minor)

What they did here

Born c.500 BCE in the Ionian Greek city of Clazomenae (in Lydia, Asia Minor), per Diogenes Laertius (2.6-7); birth date inferred from his floruit and a reported lifespan of c.72 years.

About Clazomenae

An Ionian city on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Anaxagoras—the philosopher who brought natural science to Athens and taught that a cosmic Mind set the universe in order.

See other sages who lived in Clazomenae

In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Anaxagoras’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Anaxagoras’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works

No works attributed in the corpus yet.