Other Phenomena
Anaximenes used his observations and reasoning to provide causes for other natural phenomena on the earth as well. Earthquakes he asserted were the result either of lack of moisture, which causes the earth to break apart because of how parched it is, or of overabundance thereof, which also causes cracks in the earth because of the excess of water. In either case the earth becomes weakened by its cracks and hills collapse, causing earthquakes. Lightning is also caused by a violent separation, this time of clouds by winds to create a bright, fire-like flash. Rainbows are formed when densely compressed air is touched by the rays of the sun. These examples further show how Anaximenes like the other Milesians looked for the broader picture in nature, seeking unifying causes for diversely occurring events rather than treating each one on a case-by-case basis or attributing them to gods or a personified nature.
Read more about this topic: Anaximenes Of Miletus
Famous quotes containing the word phenomena:
“The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?”
—Joyce Carol Oates (b. 1938)
“The manifestation of poetry in external life is formal perfection. True sentiment grows within, and art must represent internal phenomena externally.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)