
… the mixture of all things:
of the moist and the dry,
of the warm and the cold,
of the bright and the dark …
and, generally, of seeds infinite in quantity,
in no way like each other.
This fragment presents Anaxagoras' ideas in a succinct poetic form. He is concerned with sensation, and he selects a few for special attention. We call these perceptions Anaxagorean sensations. The passage suggests several narrative conventions for a descriptive method that seems to be deeply woven into Western thought and science. Explicitly examining these conventions gives us a deeper understanding of physics.
Anaxagorean Narrative Conventions
- Anaxagorean sensations are perfectly distinct, he says that they are "in no way like each other". This is a very early statement comparable to Pauli's exclusion principle.
- Anaxagorean sensations are characterized using binary description. For example, "the moist and the dry", or "the bright and the dark". This is the historical basis for the binary hypothesis.
- Anaxagorean sensations are objectified as σπερμάτων or 'seeds'.5
- 'All things' are a 'mixture' of these seeds.
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Anaxagoras |
