The Conception of Heaven in Anaximander’s Cosmology

Abstract One still unanswered question regarding Anaximander’s universe has to do with his conception of heaven, which is said to consists of a mixture of hot and cold. Nevertheless, one can argue that the heaven formed the outermost periphery of a finite universe because we encounter in Anaximander’s cosmogony, cosmology, meteorology, and depictions of the emergence of life and ‘the boundless’ the motif of ‘surrounding’ (περιέχειν), which expresses a mutual relations between components of a particular thing. This article argues for applying this motif also to the universe and heaven as its periphery.