created, & modified, =this.modified
rel: First Principle and Arche Islands
Apeiron is a Greek word meaning ‘(that which is) unlimited; boundless; infinite; indefinite’ from the Ionic Greek form of πέρας peras ‘end, limit, boundary”.
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.
All that is generated is generated from aperion, and all that is destroyed goes back to aperion. He believed that infinite worlds are generated from it, and destroyed there again.
His ideas were influenced by the Greek mythical tradition. 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.
In the mythical Greek cosmogony of Hesiod (8th to 7th century BC) the first primordial god is Chaos, which is a void or gap.holes Chaos is described as a gap either between Tartarus and the Earth’s surface.
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—Earth—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 sunlight. 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.
A fragment attributed to Anaximander:
Whence things have their origin, there their destruction happens as it is ordained (Greek: kata to chreon means ‘according to the debt’). For they give justice and compensation to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time.
The Goddess Justice (Dike), appears to keep the order. The quotation is close to the original meanings of the relevant Greek words. The word dike (justice) was probably originally derived from the boundaries of a man’s land and transmits metaphorically the notion that somebody must remain in his own sphere, respecting the one of his neighbour.
In Homer’s Odyssey eunomia is contrasted with hubris (arrogance). Arrogance was considered very dangerous because it could break the balance and lead to political instability and finally to the destruction of a city-state.