Commentary

This report, preserved in later writers, attributes to Anaximander an account of the origin of living things in moisture and of the descent of humans from other animals, the latter argued from the long dependence of human infants. The view is among the earliest recorded attempts to explain the development of animal life through natural causes. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield treat the testimony with caution, but they note that it accords with the general Milesian search for a material origin of living things. Charles Kahn suggests that the account of the moist origin fits the apeiron cosmology in which the primary stuff generates the variety of life. Jonathan Barnes observes that the argument from infancy may be a later rationalisation, and that the reports are not contemporary. Guthrie compares the view with later evolutionary speculation while stressing its limited evidence. The sentence is a paraphrase of a late testimony and should be labelled accordingly.