SOURCE: B. A. G. Fuller, "The School of Miletus: The First Philosophers," in History of Greek Philosophy: Thales to Democritus, Henry Holt and Company, 1923, pp. 76-102.

In this excerpt, Fuller suggests that Anaximander complicated ancient cosmology by describing the world-substance as the indeterminate ground of determinate physical types, thus presaging modern evolutionary theory.

Anaximander, a pupil of Thales, was born about 610 B.C. He lived to see the fall of Sardis and the destruction of the Lydian Empire. Indeed, the publication of his book on philosophy, perhaps the first Greek work in prose, is said to have taken place in the same memorable year—546 B.C. Only fragments of this book have come down to us, but it was extant in the time of Aristotle. The exact date of his death is unknown.

Anaximander seems to have shared the universality of his age and of his master. He...