Anaximander’s ‘Apeiron’ from a Cognitive Perspective

This article examines Anaximander’s concept of apeiron – traditionally rendered as ‘the boundless’ or ‘the infinite’ – by tracing its conceptual and semantic roots beyond standard cosmological interpretations. Given the fragmentary and often mediated nature of ancient sources, this study shifts the focus toward the pre-philosophical cognitive structures that inform Anaximander’s use of apeiron. Drawing on insights from cognitive linguistics and semantics, it argues that the two principal senses of apeiros – spatially ‘unbounded’ and epistemically ‘inexperienced’, typically treated as unrelated homonyms, in fact stem from a unified conceptual schema. Specifically, the epistemic sense of ‘inexperienced’ emerges through metaphorical extension from the experiential domain of spatial movement – which also informs the notion of apeiron as ‘unlimited’ – to that of knowledge. By reconstructing the semantic and ontological framework within which apeiron operated, this article uncovers an epistemic dimension that complements its spatial significance, revealing Anaximander’s principle not only as a limitless origin of the cosmos, but also as a reality situated beyond the bounds of human knowledge and experience. This reinterpretation opens new avenues for understanding Anaximander’s cosmology and underscores the role of embodied cognition and conceptual metaphor in the emergence of philosophical thought.