And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you

with the support of King's College London and the Lever Hume Trust.

Today's episode, Infinity and Beyond, The Philosophy of Anaxamander and Anaximenez.

In our first episode we had a look at the very first pre-Socratic philosopher, Thales of Myletus.

This episode I'll be talking about two more philosophers from the city of Myletus, an aximander and anaximonies. We know a bit more about

them than we do about Thales, but don't get your hopes up too high. Our evidence about

them is pretty thin.

I mentioned last time how amazing it is that information about these earliest Greek philosophers has reached us at all.

Maybe it's worth dwelling on this just a bit longer.

As I said last time, these guys lived in this worth dwelling on this just a bit longer.

As I said last time, these guys lived in the 6th century BC.

To give you some idea how long ago that is,

let's take someone else who lived a long time ago.

Charlemagne, the conqueror who founded the

Holy Roman Empire.

He was born in the mid-8th century A.D., which is early in the medieval period, but that still

puts him slightly closer to us in time than to the birth date of

Theles.

What I'm trying to say here is, this stuff is really, really old.

Even for ancient philosophers like Aristotle, Thales and his immediate successors were far enough in the past that it was hard to know much about them.

So we should really marvel that we, more than two millennia after Aristotle, know anything about the earliest Greek philosophers at all.

Even if Aristotle wasn't necessarily all that well informed about the first pre-secratics, He's still one of our most important sources of information

...