Anaxagoras ( 510 - 428 BC )

Anaxagoras (Anaxagoras, "lord of the assembly"; c. 510 – 428 BC) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born inClazomenae in Asia Minor, Anaxagoras was the first to bring philosophy to Athens. According to Diogenes Laertius and Plutarch, in later life he was charged with impiety and went into exile in Lampsacus; the charges may have been political, owing to his association with Pericles.

Responding to the claims of Parmenides on the impossibility of change, Anaxagoras described the world as a mixture of primary imperishable ingredients, where material variation was never caused by an absolute presence of a particular ingredient, but rather by its relative preponderance over the other ingredients; in his words, "each one is... most manifestly those things of which there are the most in it". He introduced the concept of Nous (Mind) as an ordering force, which moved and separated out the original mixture, which was homogeneous, or nearly so.

He also gave a number of novel scientific accounts of natural phenomena. He produced a correct explanation for eclipses and described the sun as a fiery mass larger than the Peloponnese, as well as attempting to explain rainbows and meteors.

Anaxagoras is believed to have owned property and enjoyed prospects of political influence in his native town of Clazomenae, in Asia Minor. However, he supposedly surrendered both of these out of a fear that they would hinder his search for knowledge. The Roman authorValerius Maximus preserves a different tradition: Anaxagoras, coming home from a long voyage, found his property in ruin, and said: "If this had not perished, I would have." A sentence, denoted by Maximus, as being "possessed of sought-after wisdom!"^[3][4] Although a Greek, he may have been a soldier of the Persian army when Clazomenae was suppressed during the Ionian Revolt.

In early manhood (c. 464–461 BC) he went to Athens, which was rapidly becoming the centre of Greek culture. There he is said to have remained for thirty years. Pericles learned to love and admire him, and the poet Euripides derived from him an enthusiasm for science and humanity.

Anaxagoras brought philosophy and the spirit of scientific inquiry from Ionia to Athens. His observations of the celestial bodies and the fall of meteorites led him to form new theories of the universal order, and to a putative prediction of the impact of a meteorite in 467 BC. He 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 was the first to explain that the moon shines due to reflected light from the sun. He also said that the moon had mountains and believed that it was inhabited.
he said, "Man is the measure of everything."