SOURCE: John Burnet, "Anaximander," in Early Greek Philosophy, The Meridian Library, 1957, pp. 50-71.

In the following excerpt, Burnet explains Anaximander's cosmological theories regarding the physical composition of the earth and its position in the universe.

Anaximander, son of Praxiades, was … a citizen of Miletos, and Theophrastos described him as an "associate" of Thales.¹ …

According to Apollodoros, Anaximander was sixty-four years old in Ol. LVIII. 2 (547/6 B.C.); and this is confirmed by Hippolytos, who says he was born in Ol. XLII. 3 (610/9 B.C.), and by Pliny, who assigns his great discovery of the obliquity of the zodiac to Ol. LVIII.² We seem to have something more here than a combination of the ordinary type; for, according to all the rules, Anaximander should have "flourished" in 565 B.C., half-way between Thales and Anaximenes, and this would make him sixty, not sixty-four, in 546. Now Apollodoros appears to have said that he...