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Full Idea
Air in itself seems to me to be God and to reach everywhere and to arrange everything and to be in everything.
Gist of Idea
Air is divine, because it is in and around everything, and arranges everything
Source
Diogenes (Apoll) (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B05), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 152.22-
Book Ref
'Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers', ed/tr. Freeman,Kathleen [Harvard 1957], p.88
A Reaction
So water and fire and air have been offered as the ultimate explanans, though no one seems to offer earth, which is too grubby and miserable (and was denied a Form by Plato). 'Air is God' could ground a nice modern religious sect.
| 5995 | Diogenes of Apollonia offered the first teleological account of cosmology [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Robinson,TM] |
| 1542 | Diogenes of Apollonia was the last natural scientist [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Simplicius] |
| 1544 | Perception must be an internal matter, because we can fail to perceive when we are preoccupied [Diogenes of Apollonia, by Theophrastus] |
| 483 | Start a thesis with something undisputable [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 484 | Everything is ultimately a variation of one underlying thing [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 486 | Plants and animals can only come into existence if something fixes their species [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 485 | Things must retain their essential nature during change, or mixing would be impossible [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 489 | Each thing must be in some way unique [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 488 | Air is divine, because it is in and around everything, and arranges everything [Diogenes of Apollonia] |
| 24042 | The older Diogenes said the soul is air, made of the smallest particles [Diogenes of Apollonia] |