Apeiron

Apeiron (/əˈpaɪrɒn/; ἄπειρον) is a Greek word meaning '(that which is) unlimited,' 'boundless', 'infinite', or 'indefinite' from ἀ- a-, 'without' and πεῖραρ peirar, 'end, limit', 'boundary', the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, 'end, limit, boundary'. It is akin to Persian piramon, meaning 'boundary, circumference, surrounding'. for they 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.Whence 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.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.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.The idea that the fact of existence by itself carries along an incurable guilt is Greek (Theognis 327) and anybody claims that surpasses it, commits arrogance and therefore he becomes guilty. The first half of the 6th century is a period of great social instability in Miletus, the city state where Anaximander lives. Any attempt of excess leads to exaggerations and each exaggeration must be corrected. All these have to be paid according to the debt. The things give justice to one another with the process of time.Anaximander from Miletus, son of Praxiades student and descendant of Thales, said that the origin and the element of things (beings) is apeiron and he is the first who used this name for the origin (arche). He says that the origin is neither water, nor any other of the so-called elements, but something of different nature, unlimited. From it are generated the skies and the worlds which exist between them. Whence things (beings) 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, as he said in poetic terms. Obviously noticing the mutual changes between the four elements, he didn't demand to make one of them a subject, but something else except these. He considers that genesis takes place without any decay of this element, but with the generation of the opposites by his own movement. Apeiron (/əˈpaɪrɒn/; ἄπειρον) is a Greek word meaning '(that which is) unlimited,' 'boundless', 'infinite', or 'indefinite' from ἀ- a-, 'without' and πεῖραρ peirar, 'end, limit', 'boundary', the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras, 'end, limit, boundary'. It is akin to Persian piramon, meaning 'boundary, circumference, surrounding'. 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 (cf. Heraclitus). 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 to 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. 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 (Miller's interpretation) or between earth's surface and the sky (Cornford's interpretation). 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 Enuma Elish 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 (Hiranyagarbha) 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:.mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0} 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 that 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.