Early Greek Philosophy

φύσις.

VII. Now, Ionian science was introduced into Athens by Anaxagoras about the time Euripides was born, and there are sufficient traces of its influence on him.¹ It is, therefore, significant that, in a fragment which portrays the blessedness of a life devoted to scientific research (ἱστορία),² he uses the very epithets "ageless and deathless" which Anaximander had applied to the one primary substance, and that he associates them with the term φύσις. The passage is so important for our present purpose that I quote it in full:

Blessed is he who has gained knowledge of research,
neither rushing toward the afflictions of citizens
nor toward unjust deeds,
but observing the ageless order of immortal φύσις,
of what it is composed, and how, and in what way;
for such men, the practice of shameful
deeds never takes hold.³

This fragment is clear evidence that, in the fifth century B.C., the name φύσις was given to the everlasting something of which the world was made. That is quite in accordance with the history of the word, so far as we can make it out. Its original meaning appears to be the "stuff" of which

and that this is the one and the all, though they do not agree as to names; for one of them says that air is this one and the all, another fire, another water, another earth, and each adds to his own theory proofs and evidences, which are, in fact, nothing.
¹ See below, § 123.
² Cf. Plato, Phaedo, 96 a 7: "this wisdom which they call research into nature." This is the oldest and most trustworthy statement as to the name originally given to science. I lay no stress on the fact that the books of the early cosmologists are generally quoted under the title On Nature, as such titles are probably of later date.
³ Eur. fr. inc. 910. The word κόσμος here means, of course, "ordering," "arrangement," and ἀγήρω is genitive. The object of research is firstly what is "the ordering of immortal ageless φύσις," and secondly, how it arose. Anaxagoras, who introduced Ionian science to Athens, had belonged to the school of Anaximenes (§ 122). We know from Aristotle (loc. cit. p. 9 n. 1) that not only Anaximander, but most of the φυσιολόγοι, applied epithets like this to the Boundless.