Apeiron (cosmology) - Other Pre-Socratic Philosophers' Ideas About Apeiron

Other Pre-Socratic Philosophers' Ideas About Apeiron

Other pre-Socratic philosophers had different theories of the apeiron. For the Pythagoreans (in particular, Philolaus), the universe had begun as an apeiron, but at some point it inhaled the void from outside, filling the cosmos with vacuous bubbles that split the world into many different parts. For Anaxagoras, the initial apeiron had begun to rotate rapidly under the control of a godlike Nous (Mind), and the great speed of the rotation caused the universe to break up into many fragments. However, since all individual things had originated from the same apeiron, all things must contain parts of all other things—for instance, a tree must also contain tiny pieces of sharks, moons, and grains of sand. This alone explains how one object can be transformed into another, since each thing already contains all other things in germ.