Philosophy Chapter 2

1-Explain (summarize and explain the main ideas of the philosopher) and evaluate (give reasons to defend your analysis of the views by giving arguments) the view of Anaxagoras regarding the nature of reality? * Anaxagoras accepted the principle that all changes in the objects of experience are in reality changes in the arrangements of underlying particles, he believed that everything was infinitely divisible. He was the man who introduces Philosophy to Athens; also he introduced into metaphysics an important distinction between matter and mind. Anaxagoras stated that each kind of substance has its own corresponding kind of particle and that each substance contains particles of every other kind. He postulated that the source of all motion is something called nous and by nous he meant pretty much an equation between mind and reason. I think he was not that far away from reality, to be a man living in that time, without the instruments we have today he was close to defining the nature of reality. He believed that the universe was infinite (which so far is true), and that it was an undifferentiated mass, which is also true. About the formation of the world, he said that it was the result of a rotatory motion produced in this mass by mind. About this he is not that correct. One of the theories about how everything began Is the Bing Bang Theory… that a big star exploded and out of that dust the planets were created… it might have been because of rotation but not in mind. The Christian people would agree more on this, because they would state that it was created on the mind of God omnipotent.

2) Explain and evaluate the view of Anaximander?
- Anaximander was a Milesian. Anaximander was a pupil of Thales, who believed that the basic substance out of which everything comes must be more elementary than water; this substance must be ageless, boundless, and indeterminate. He proposed a theory of the universe that explained things in the terms of natural powers and