1. Anaximenes postulates air as the archê. This may seem to be a throwback to Thales, a step backward after Anaximander; but I will argue that is is not. 2. Anaximenes is offering a new world view: 1. Anaximander thought of the basic stuffs and qualities of the world as opposites in conflict. 2. Anaximenes had a different conception: the basic stuffs and qualities are not opposed, but different stages of a continuum. 3. Rarefaction and Condensation: Read the fragments …showed first 75 words of 1102 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1102 total…of air as the "material substratum" seems retrograde -- a throwback to Thales. But there are advantages to Anaximenes' theory: 1. It is closer to experience; it does not rely on unobservables. 2. There is at least a suggestion of trying to reduce qualitative differences to quantitative ones. 3. There is an actual theory to explain how the process of transmutation works. 4. An attempt to explain the mechanism of change, to answer the question "how does change occur"?