A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



and used from remote periods in the Orient, and the 

 most that is probable is that Anaximander may have 

 elaborated some special design, possibly the bowl- 

 shaped sundial, through which the shadow of the 

 gnomon would indicate the time. The same philos- 

 opher is said to have made the first sketch of a geo- 

 graphical map, but this again is a statement which 

 modern researches have shown to be fallacious, since 

 a Babylonian attempt at depicting the geography of 

 the world is still preserved to us on a clay tablet. 

 Anaximander may, however, have been the first Greek 

 to make an attempt of this kind. Here again the in- 

 fluence of Babylonian science upon the germinating 

 Western thought is suggested. 



It is said that Anaximander departed from Thales's 

 conception of the earth, and, it may be added, from the 

 Babylonian conception also, in that he conceived it 

 as a cylinder, or rather as a truncated cone, the upper 

 end of which is the habitable portion. This concep- 

 tion is perhaps the first of these guesses through which 

 the Greek mind attempted to explain the apparent 

 fixity of the earth. To ask what supports the earth 

 in space is most natural, but the answer given by 

 Anaximander, like that more familiar Greek solution 

 which transformed the cone, or cylinder, into the giant 

 Atlas, is but another illustration of that substitution 

 of unwarranted inference for scientific induction 

 which we have already so often pointed out as charac- 

 teristic of the primitive stages of thought. 



Anaximander held at least one theory which, as 

 vouched for by various copyists and commentators, 

 entitles him to be considered perhaps the first teacher 



no 



