ARCHELAUS OF

See also:

• MILETUS (mod. Palatia)

MILETUS  , Greek philosopher of the 5th century B.C., was born probably at Athens, though Diogenes Laertius (ii . 16) says at Miletus . He was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and is said by Ion of Chios (ap . Diog . Laert. ii . 23) to have been the teacher of Socrates . Some argue that this is probably only an attempt to connect Socrates with the Ionian school; others (e.g . Gomperz, Greek Thinkers) uphold the story . There is similar difference of opinion as regards the statement that Archelaus formulated certain ethical doctrines . In general, he followed Anaxagoras, but in his cosmology he went back to the earlier Ionians . He postulated primitive Matter, identical with air and mingled with Mind, thus avoiding the dualism of Anaxagoras . Out of this conscious " air," by a process of thickening and thinning, arose cold and warmth, or water and fire, the one passive, the other active .

The

earth and the heavenly bodies are formed ARCHERY from mud, the product of fire and water, from which springs also man, at first in his lower forms . Man differs from animals by the possession of the moral and artistic faculty . No fragments of Archelaus remain; his doctrines have to be extracted from Diogenes Laertius, Simplicius, Plutarch and Hippolytus . See IONIAN SCHOOL; for his ethical theories see T . Gomperz, Greek Thinkers (Eng. trans., 1901), vol. i. p . 402 .