The Doctrine Of Air In Ancient Greece

During Ancient Greece, Pre-Socratic philosophers had turned away from religious teachings and sought to use “logic and theoretical reasoning to solve practical questions” (Cunningham 72). Through the power of human reasoning, many philosophers derived concepts and theories of the world’s fundamentality and the human existence. They examined several fundamental questions regarding the composition of the world and the possibility of unity of all things. As mentioned in the video, these philosophers generally believed that the world was at constant change and that different things had infinite plurality, and some even believed that it all pertained into a single or permanent substance ("Academy of Ideas"). This single substance was named as Arche,
also known as ruler, which during this time period was considered to be a materialistic substance that was associated with characteristics, such as alive, divine, and intelligent. Several philosophers believed that it gave the “guides of birth, transformation, and death of all things” ("Academy of Ideas"), which seemed to satisfy the constant flux of the world. The major difference between many Pre-Socratic philosophers is their distinct approach to answer the composition of the arche.
If I lived in the time of Ancient Greece along with the development of rational philosophy, I would agree mostly with Anaximenes.
He proposed several principles, including the Doctrine of Air and Doctrine of Change, which was backed up by “scientific explanations as to how air transforms into all the things we perceive as existing in this world” ("Academy of Ideas").The Doctrine of Air basically was thought as a neutral thing that was found anywhere and was able to constantly act and transform into other materials that organized the world; being the Arche. As stated in an Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “In early Greek literature, air is associated with the soul (the breath of life)” (Graham), which meant that it was able to direct its own development and thus provide the constant flux of the world. It further states that Anaximenes “may have thought of air capable of directing its own development, as the soul controls the body” (Graham). While reading about this, I couldn’t help to associate this “breath of life” with the most crucial element in the composition of life; hydrogen. Then again, air is a mixture of gasses including Hydrogen, which is a main contributor to the creation of the universe, “gas clouds and huge stars” and that “also plays an important role in the composition of life” ("Livestrong"). Setting this rational type of perspective, I can see a greater linkage between Anaximenes’ Doctrine of Air being the world and its
fundamentals.
The video mainly focuses on Anaximenes’ Doctrine of Change. This doctrine is, of course, linked into the belief that all things are composed of air. Anaximenes was one of the first from the Pro-Socratic philosophers to provide a credible scientific theory, which illustrated “as to how the arche, air, can transform into water, earth, and fire” ("Academy of Ideas"). Whenever air is thinned it becomes fire, whereas wheneber air is condensed it becomes wind and then transforms to cloud. Then, of course, once water is condensed it becomes earth, and then subsequently stone. These simple processes are rarefaction and condensation; two simple natural physical processes. These processes are contrary and are based on the air’s infrequencies and thickness. As mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “air differs in accordance with its rarity or density, which Anaximenes then concluded that “rarity is correlated with fire and density with coldness” (Graham). With such scientific evidence, it inevitably led into the understanding that air was the so idealized arche that changed and transformed into everything we experienced; making it the origin of all things.