Anaximander on basic substances and the desiccation of the sea

Abstract This paper deals with the physics of Anaximander and argues that, in his theory, the drying up of the sea cannot be accounted for in terms of the kind of conflict envisaged in his main fragment between the four basic substances: the hot, the cold, the wet and the dry ( DK 12B1). In so doing, the paper takes issue with a classic interpretation of Anaximander’s cosmology advocated by Jaap Mansfeld (2011). This issue also brings us to a wider philosophical problem: are meteorological phenomena in general amenable to this conflict according to Anaximander? In the conclusion, a few conjectural remarks are made regarding what may have been the real explanandum of this theory.