Apeiron

Category:
Apeiron | Unlimited
Apeiron | Unlimited

1. Apeiron

Apeiron (ἄπειρον) is a Greek word meaning (that which is) unlimited, boundless, infinite, or indefinite from ἀ-, without and πεῖραρ, end, limit, boundary, the Ionic Greek form of πέρας, end, limit, boundary.

2. Origin of everything

The Apeiron is central to the cosmological theory created by Anaximander, a 6th-century BC pre-Socratic Greek philosopher whose work is mostly lost.

From the few existing fragments, we learn that he believed the beginning or ultimate reality (Arche) is eternal and infinite, or boundless (Apeiron),

subject to neither old age nor decay, which perpetually yields fresh materials from which everything we can perceive is derived.

Apeiron generated the opposites (hot–cold, wet–dry, etc.) which acted on the creation of the world.

Everything is generated from Apeiron and then it is destroyed by going back to Apeiron, according to necessity.

He believed that infinite worlds are generated from Apeiron and then they are destroyed there again.

His ideas were influenced by the Greek mythical tradition and by his teacher Thales (7th - 6th century BC).

Searching for some universal principle, Anaximander retained the traditional religious assumption that there was a Cosmic Order and tried to explain it rationally, using the old mythical language which ascribed divine control on various spheres of reality.

This language was more suitable for a society which could see Gods everywhere; therefore the first glimmerings of laws of nature were themselves derived from Divine Laws.

The Greeks believed that the Universal Principles could also be applied to human societies.

The word nomos (law) may originally have meant natural law and used later to mean man-made law.

Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction. It adopted Apeiron as the origin of all things, because it is completely indefinite.

This is a further transition from the previous existing mythical way of thought to the newer rational way of thought which is the main characteristic of the Archaic period (8th to 6th century BC).

This shift in thought is correlated with the new political conditions in the Greek city states during the 6th century BC.

3. Roots

In the mythical Greek cosmogony of Hesiod (8th to 7th century BC) the first primordial God is Chaos, which is a void or gap.

Chaos is described as a gap either between Tartarus and the earth's surface  or between earth's surface and the sky. One can name it also Abyss (having no bottom).

Alternately, Greek philosopher Thales believed that the origin or first principle was water.

Pherecydes of Syros (6th century BC) probably called the water also Chaos and this is not placed at the very beginning.

In the creation stories of Near East the primordial world is described formless and empty. The only existing thing prior to creation was the water abyss.

The Babylonian cosmology Enūma Eliš describes the earliest stage of the universe as one of watery chaos and something similar is described in Genesis.

In the Hindu cosmogony which is similar to the Vedic (Hiraṇyagarbha) the initial state of the universe was an absolute darkness.

Hesiod made an abstraction, because his original Chaos is a void, something completely indefinite. In his opinion the origin should be indefinite and indeterminate.

The indefiniteness is spatial in early usages as in Homer (indefinite sea).

A fragment from Xenophanes (6th century BC) shows the transition from Chaos to Apeiron:

The upper limit of earth borders on air. The lower limit reaches down to the Unlimited. (i.e. the Apeiron).

Either Apeiron meant the spatial indefinite and was implied to be indefinite in kind, or Anaximander intended it primarily “that which is indefinite in kind” but assumed it also to be of unlimited extent and duration.

His ideas may have been influenced by the Pythagoreans:

... for they the Pythagoreans plainly say that when the One had been constructed, whether out of planes or of surface or of seed or of elements which they cannot express, immediately the nearest part of the Unlimited began to be drawn in and limited by the limit.

/Philolaus/

Greek philosophy entered a high level of abstraction making Apeiron the principle of all things and some scholars saw a gap between the existing mythical and the new rational way of thought (rationalism).

But if we follow the course, we will see that there is not such an abrupt break with the previous thought.

The basic elements of nature, water, air, fire, earth, which the first Greek philosophers believed composed the world, represent in fact the mythical primordial forces.

The collision of these forces produced the cosmic harmony according to the Greek cosmogony (Hesiod).

Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between these elements, therefore he chose something else (indefinite in kind) which could generate the others without experiencing any decay.

There is also a fragment attributed to his teacher Thales:

What is divine? What has no origin, nor end.

This probably led his student to his final decision for Apeiron, because the divinity applied to it implies that it always existed.

The notion of the temporal infinity was familiar to the Greek mind from remote antiquity in the religious conception of immortality and Anaximander's description was in terms appropriate to this conception.

4. Creation of the world

The Apeiron has generally been understood as a sort of primal Chaos.

It acts as the substratum supporting opposites such as hot and cold, wet and dry, and directed the movement of things, by which there grew up all of the host of shapes and differences which are found in the world.

Out of the vague and limitless body there sprang a central mass—this earth of ours—cylindrical in shape.

A sphere of fire surrounded the air around the earth and had originally clung to it like the bark round a tree. When it broke, it created the sun, the moon and the stars.

The first animals were generated in the water. When they came to earth they were transmuted by the effect of the sun.

The human being sprung from some other animal, which originally was similar to a fish.

The blazing orbs, which have drawn off from the cold earth and water, are the temporary gods of the world clustering around the earth, which to the ancient thinker is the central figure.

5. Interpretations

In the commentary of Simplicius on Aristotle's Physics the following fragment is attributed direct to Anaximander:

From where things have their origin, there their destruction happens as it is ordained.

For they give justice and compensation to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.

Simplicius comments that Anaximander noticed the mutual changes between the 4 elements (earth, air, water, fire), therefore he did not choose one of them as an origin, but something else which generates the opposites without experiencing any decay.

He mentions also that Anaximander said all these in poetic terms, meaning that he used the old mythical language.

Aetius (1st century BC) transmits a different quotation:

Everything is generated from Apeiron and there its destruction happens. Infinite worlds are generated and they are destructed there again.

And he says (Anaximander) why this is Apeiron. Because only then genesis and decay will never stop.

/Aetius/

Therefore, it seems that Anaximander argued about Apeiron and this is also noticed by Aristotle:

The belief that there is something Apeiron stems from the idea that only then genesis and decay will never stop, when that from which is taken what is generated is Apeiron.

/Aristotle, Physics/

Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that Anaximander was a pessimist and that he viewed all coming to be as an illegitimate emancipation from the eternal being, a wrong for which destruction is the only penance.

In accordance to this the world of the individual definite objects should perish into the indefinite since anything definite has to eventually return to the indefinite. His ideas had a great influence on many scholars including Martin Heidegger.

6. Influence on Greek and Western thought

We may assume that the contradiction in the different interpretations is because Anaximander combined 2 different ways of thought:

The first one dealing with Apeiron is metaphysical (and can lead to monism),

while the second one dealing with mutual changes and the balance of the opposites as central to reality is physical.

The same paradox existed in the Greek way of thought.

The Greeks believed that each individual had Unlimited potentialities both in brain and in heart, an outlook which called a man to live at the top of his powers.

But that there was a limit to his most violent ambitions, that arrogance-injustice (hubris or adikia) could disturb the harmony and balance. In that case Justice (dike) would destroy him to re-establish the order.

These ideas are obvious in later Greek philosophers.

Philolaus (5th century BC) mentions that nature constituted and is organized with the world from Unlimited (ἄπειρα, plural of Apeiron) and Limited. Everything which exists in the world contains the Unlimited (Apeiron) and the Limited.

Something similar is mentioned by Plato:

Nothing can exist if it doesn't contain continually and simultaneously the Limited and the Unlimited, the Definite and the Indefinite.

7. Other pre-Socratic philosophies

Other pre-Socratic philosophers had different theories of the Apeiron.

For the Pythagoreans (in particular, Philolaus), the universe had begun as an Apeiron, but at some point it inhaled the void from outside, filling the cosmos with vacuous bubbles that split the world into many different parts.

For Anaxagoras, the initial Apeiron had begun to rotate rapidly under the control of a godlike Nous (Mind), and the great speed of the rotation caused the universe to break up into many fragments.

Since all individual things had originated from the same Apeiron, all things must contain parts of all other things. This explains how one object can be transformed into another, since each thing already contains all other things in germ.