1. Anaxagoras gave several novel scientific accounts of natural phenomena, including the notion of panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and could be distributed everywhere.
15 Facts About Anaxagoras
1. 2.
Anaxagoras deduced a correct explanation for eclipses and described the Sun as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese, and attempted to explain rainbows and meteors.
3.
Anaxagoras speculated that the sun might be just another star.
4.
Anaxagoras arrived at Athens, either shortly after the Persian war, or at some point when he was a bit older, around 456 BCE.
5.
Anaxagoras introduced the concept of nous as an ordering force, which moved and separated the original mixture, which was homogeneous or nearly so.
6.
Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens.
7.
Anaxagoras was the first to give a correct explanation of eclipses, and was both famous and notorious for his scientific theories, including the claims that the Sun is a mass of red-hot metal, that the Moon is earthy, and that the stars are fiery stones.
8.
Anaxagoras thought that the Earth was flat and floated supported by 'strong' air under it, and that disturbances in this air sometimes caused earthquakes.
9.
Anaxagoras introduced the notion of panspermia, that life exists throughout the universe and could be distributed everywhere.
10.
Anaxagoras attempted to give a scientific account of eclipses, meteors, rainbows, and the Sun, which he described as a mass of blazing metal, larger than the Peloponnese; he said that the Moon had mountains, and he believed that it was inhabited.
11.
Anaxagoras wrote a book of philosophy, but only fragments of the first part of this have survived, through preservation in the work of Simplicius of Cilicia in the 6th century AD.
12.
Anaxagoras's book was reportedly available for a drachma in the Athenian marketplace.
13.
Anaxagoras is mentioned by Socrates during his trial in Plato's Apology.
14.
Anaxagoras is mentioned in Seneca's Natural Questions.
15.
Anaxagoras appears as a character in the second Act of Faust, Part II by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.