A Priori
A priori is a term used to identify a type of knowledge which is obtained independently of experience. A proposition is known a priori if when judged true or false one does not refer to experience. A priorism is a philosophical position maintaining that our minds gain knowledge independently of experience through innate ideas or mental faculties. The term a priori is distinguished from a posteriori, which means knowledge gained through the senses and experience. These are the two most common...
Anaximander 611547 BCE
Anaximander was a Greek philosopher of Miletus, born 611 BCE., and hence a younger contemporary of Thales and Pherecydes. He lived at the court of Polycrates of Samos, and died 547. He wrote a prose work in the Ionic dialect of which on fragment survives. Anaximander thought it unnecessary to fix upon air, water, or fire as the original and primary form of body. He preferred to represent it simply as a boundless something from which all things arise and to which they all return again. He was...
Anaximenes d 502 BCE
Anaximenes was a Greek philosopher of Miletus, a younger contemporary and pupil of Anaximander, who died about 502. He was not a great original genius like Anaximander, and in some respects his cosmology falls far short of his predecessor's. His title to remembrance is based on his discovery of the formula which for the first time made the Milesian theory coherent of rarefaction and condensation. He regarded 'air' -- the air we breathe, but also that which thickens into mist and water -- as the...