Diogenes of Apollonia

Diogenes (6th c. BCE) was a native of Apollonia in Crete. He was a pupil of Anaximenes and contemporary with Anaxagoras. Schleiermecher, however, affirms, from the internal evidence of the fragments of the two philosophers, that Diogenes preceded Anaxagoras. But Diogenes might have written before Anaxagoras and yet have been his junior, as we know was the case with Empedocles. Diogenes followed Anaximines in making air the primal element of all things; but he carried his views further, and regarded the universe as issuing from an intelligent principle, by which it was at once vivified and ordered, a rational as well as sensitive soul, but still without recognizing any distinction between matter and mind. Diogenes wrote several books on Cosmology Peri Phuseos.

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