Diogenes: Anaximenes

¹ Diogenes was:

• a native of Apollonia
• the son of Apollothemis, a natural philosopher of high reputation
• according to Antisthenes a pupil of Anaximenes
• a contemporary of Anaxagoras

Demetrius Phalereus says, in his Defence of Socrates, that he was very unpopular at Athens, and even in some danger of his life.

² He believed that:

• the air was an element
• the worlds were infinite
• the vacuum also was infinite
• the air, as it was condensed, and as it was expanded, was the productive cause of the worlds
• nothing can be produced out of nothing
• nothing can be destroyed so as to become nothing
• the earth is round, firmly planted in the middle of the universe
• the earth got its position from the circumvolutions of the hot principle around it, and its consistency from the cold.

The first words of his treatise are:

“It appears to me that he who begins any treatise ought to lay down principles about which there can be no dispute, and that his exposition of them ought to be simple and dignified.”