Anaxagoras introduced Nous as an ordering intelligence that initiates a cosmic rotation while holding that ingredients of every kind are present in every compound.
Intellectual setting
His natural explanations became controversial in classical Athens, where accounts of celestial bodies could be read as challenging civic religious expectations.
Key ideas
Nous
Mind is separate, knowing, and powerful enough to begin the ordered motion of the cosmos.
Mixture
Growth and change are explained by separation and rearrangement rather than generation of wholly new stuff.
Legacy
Anaxagoras supplied later philosophers with both a model of intelligent causation and a challenge about how mind acts on matter.