more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Anaxagoras assumed that Mind, which is God, is the efficient principle, and the multi-mixture of homoeomeries is the material principle.
Clarification
The parts of a homoeomery consist of the same stuff as the whole
Gist of Idea
Mind creates the world from a mixture of pure substances
Source
report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by - I.6
Book Ref
Sextus Empiricus: 'Against the Physicists/Against the Ethicists', ed/tr. Bury,R.G. [Harvard Loeb 1997], p.5
A Reaction
The choice of homoeomeries as basic is a good one. They are much better candidates than materials which are made of parts of a quite different kind, where the parts are a better candidate than the whole.
| 22727 | Mind creates the world from a mixture of pure substances [Anaxagoras, by ] |
| 13216 | Matter is the limit of points and lines, and must always have quality and form [Aristotle] |
| 17994 | The primary matter is the substratum for the contraries like hot and cold [Aristotle] |
| 16590 | Matter is neither a particular thing nor a member of a determinate category [Aristotle] |
| 10955 | Matter is perceptible (like bronze) or intelligible (like mathematical objects) [Aristotle] |
| 601 | Substance must exist, because something must endure during change between opposites [Aristotle] |
| 12299 | Aristotle had a hierarchical conception of matter [Aristotle, by Fine,K] |
| 12001 | Aristotle says matter is a lesser substance, rather than wholly denying that it is a substance [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| 16762 | Matter desires form, as female desires male, and ugliness desires beauty [Aristotle] |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| 16624 | Stripped and passive matter is just a human invention [Bacon] |
| 14265 | The components of abstract definitions could play the same role as matter for physical objects [Fine,K] |