Anaximenes of Miletus

Hello! My name is Anaximenes. I lived a very, very long time ago, around the year 585 BCE, in a sunny Greek city by the sea called Miletus. Even as a boy, I loved to look up at the big blue sky and watch the waves crash on the shore. I was always wondering about the world around me. I would ask big questions like, 'What are the stars made of?' and 'Where does the wind come from?' This made me a 'philosopher,' which is a fancy word for a 'lover of wisdom.' I didn't want magical answers; I wanted to understand how nature worked all by itself. It was the most exciting puzzle I could imagine.

The biggest question of all for me and my friends was, 'What is everything made of?' Think about it! Trees, rocks, water, and even people—could they all come from just one thing? My wonderful teacher was named Anaximander, and his teacher was a man named Thales. They both had their own ideas about this big question. Thales thought everything was made of water. But I looked around and thought of something different. I believed that the one special thing that everything came from was air. I called it 'aer.' Air is everywhere, isn't it? You can't see it, but you can feel it when the wind blows. Most importantly, we all need it to live. I thought something so important must be the beginning of everything.

But how could solid rocks and fiery stars both be made of air? I had an idea about that, too. I believed air could change. Think about what happens when you breathe out on a very cold day. You can see your breath, like a little cloud! That's air getting thicker. I called this 'condensing.' I thought that when air got squeezed together, it first became wind. If it got squeezed even more, it turned into clouds, and then water. If it got squeezed tighter and tighter, it would become solid things like earth and stones. I also thought about the opposite. When air stretched out and became thinner, a process I called 'rarefaction,' it would get hot and turn into fire. I believed the sun and the stars were made of this fiery, thinned-out air.

I spent my entire life in my hometown of Miletus, always thinking and asking questions about the world. I lived until about the year 528 BCE. I lived to be about 57 years old. My ideas about air might sound simple today, but I was one of the very first people to try and explain our world using nature instead of stories about gods and magic. I showed everyone that you could find answers just by looking closely at the world. My story reminds us that being curious and asking big questions is the very first step toward making amazing new discoveries.