PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kočandrle, Radim
TI  - Searching for Origins of Earth Stability Conception
DP  - 2017 Mar 30
TA  - Aither
PG  - 4--31
VI  - 9
IP  - 1
AID - 10.5507/aither.2017.001
IS  - 18037879
AB  - In his De caelo, Aristotle ascribes to Anaximander of Miletus a conception according to which the Earth remains at its place in the universe only thanks to the symmetry of its position. Simplicius, however, in his commentary on this passage from Aristotle, notes that such a formulation can also be found in Plato. Aetius, meanwhile, ascribes this entire argument to Parmenides and Democritus. Plato shows that the validity of this argument is based on the assumption that both the Earth and the universe that surrounds it are spherical. Anaximander, however, in all likelihood, believes the Earth to be flat - a feature typical of Ionian cosmology. Given that a belief in a spherical shape of the universe and the Earth can be demonstrated in the Pythagorean School and is hinted upon in Parmenides, we could assume that this conception originated in the Italian branch of philosophy. And since we do not have enough texts to satisfactorily reconstruct Pythagorean thoughts and have to rely on much later reports by Philolaus, one could assume that the whole argument about the stability of the Earth due to equilibrium and symmetry is based on Parmenides's thoughts.