“The opposites, hot and cold, wet and dry, separated out from the boundless when the world was generated.”
— AnaximanderParaphrase of testimonia in Simplicius and Aetius, reflecting Diels-Kranz 12 A9-A10; not verbatim
Commentary
This paraphrase describes the process by which the opposites separated out of the apeiron to form the ordered world, a doctrine that connects the first principle with the observable qualities of the elements. The idea that the opposites are generated from a single undifferentiated source explains the variety of the cosmos without multiplying principles. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield present the separation of opposites as the mechanism that links the apeiron to the familiar world, and they note that the doxographical reports differ in their details. Charles Kahn argues that the process is best understood as a cosmogony in which the ordering of time, mentioned in the verbatim fragment, governs the sequence of separations. Jonathan Barnes cautions that the list of opposites comes from later writers who may have systematised Anaximander's terms. Guthrie treats the account of opposites as a key element in the history of the concept of qualities in early Greek physics. The sentence is a paraphrase and should be labelled as a doxographical report, with the sources consulted before quotation.
Commentary
This paraphrase describes the process by which the opposites separated out of the apeiron to form the ordered world, a doctrine that connects the first principle with the observable qualities of the elements. The idea that the opposites are generated from a single undifferentiated source explains the variety of the cosmos without multiplying principles. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield present the separation of opposites as the mechanism that links the apeiron to the familiar world, and they note that the doxographical reports differ in their details. Charles Kahn argues that the process is best understood as a cosmogony in which the ordering of time, mentioned in the verbatim fragment, governs the sequence of separations. Jonathan Barnes cautions that the list of opposites comes from later writers who may have systematised Anaximander's terms. Guthrie treats the account of opposites as a key element in the history of the concept of qualities in early Greek physics. The sentence is a paraphrase and should be labelled as a doxographical report, with the sources consulted before quotation.