“The boundless has neither beginning nor end, for it is the beginning of all things and encompasses all things.”
— Anaximander[commonly attributed] Paraphrase of testimonia in Aristotle, Physics 203b, and Simplicius, Physics 24.20; not verbatim
Commentary
This paraphrase reports the argument, attributed to Anaximander by Aristotle and Simplicius, that the apeiron must be without beginning or end, since whatever had a limit would be bounded by something else. Aristotle presents this as an early argument for the infinite as an arche, and he reads it as the reason Anaximander did not identify the first principle with any finite element. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, in The Presocratic Philosophers, treat the argument as a significant step in the history of the concept of infinity, while noting that the wording is Aristotle's own reconstruction. Charles Kahn, in Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960), argues that the boundless is best understood as the undetermined source from which determinate things are separated, a reading that fits the cosmogonic language of the verbatim fragment. Jonathan Barnes cautions that the sense of apeiron as infinite in Aristotle's terms may project later categories onto Anaximander's usage. W. K. C. Guthrie, in A History of Greek Philosophy, treats the argument as one of the earliest philosophical attempts to reason about the infinite. Because the sentence reflects Aristotle's paraphrase rather than Anaximander's own words, it should be labelled as an attribution and not presented as a quotation.
Commentary
This paraphrase reports the argument, attributed to Anaximander by Aristotle and Simplicius, that the apeiron must be without beginning or end, since whatever had a limit would be bounded by something else. Aristotle presents this as an early argument for the infinite as an arche, and he reads it as the reason Anaximander did not identify the first principle with any finite element. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, in The Presocratic Philosophers, treat the argument as a significant step in the history of the concept of infinity, while noting that the wording is Aristotle's own reconstruction. Charles Kahn, in Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology (1960), argues that the boundless is best understood as the undetermined source from which determinate things are separated, a reading that fits the cosmogonic language of the verbatim fragment. Jonathan Barnes cautions that the sense of apeiron as infinite in Aristotle's terms may project later categories onto Anaximander's usage. W. K. C. Guthrie, in A History of Greek Philosophy, treats the argument as one of the earliest philosophical attempts to reason about the infinite. Because the sentence reflects Aristotle's paraphrase rather than Anaximander's own words, it should be labelled as an attribution and not presented as a quotation.