Anaxagoras
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Anaxagoras. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an-aks-ag'o-ras, a Grecian philosopher. He lived about 500-428 B. C. He was born in Clazomenae, a city of Ionia on the coast of Asia Minor . Anaxagoras was a friend of Pericles, and a constant visitor in his home. He was an admirer of Aspasia. He taught the doctrine that the ruling principle in the universe was a world-ordering mind. "In the beginning all things were chaos. Then came intelligence and set all in order." He inquired into the nature of comets, and tried to explain other natural phenomena. He held to the notion that the miraculous is simple enough and natural enough, if one can only get at the real facts in the case. Anaxagoras lived in Athens thirty years. Like Socrates, he was accused by his political opponents of impiety. He sought safety in Lampsacus, where his death took place. Although, at first thought, the gropings of the old philosopher may seem elementary, as a matter of fact Anaxagoras was a man of powerful mind, a leader of thought in an age of no little intellectuality. He was first of all an honest, determined investigator.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a famous Greek philosopher of the Ionic school, born at Clazomenæ in 500 B. C. He explained eclipses and advanced physical science. In philosophy, he taught that the universe is regulated by an eternal self-existent and infinitely powerful principle, called by him mind; matter he seems to have asserted to be eternal, what is called generation and destruction being merely the temporary union and separation of existing elements; he disproved the doctrine that thi have arisen by chance. Fragments of his "Treatise on Nature" are still in existence. He died in 428 b. c.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
A Clazomenian philosopher, who disregarded wealth and honors to indulge his fondness for meditation and philosophy. He applied himself to astronomy, and obtained a knowledge of eclipses. He used to say he preferred a grain of wisdom to heaps of gold. He was accused of impiety and condemned to die, but he ridiculed the sentence, which he said had already been pronounced on him by nature. He died at the age of seventy-two, B. C. 428.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The facts these accounts give — born at Clazomenae about 500 BC, friend of Pericles, tried for impiety, died at Lampsacus in 428 BC — are still what scholars accept, and his "Treatise on Nature" is still known only from the same scattered quotations Collier's noted in 1921. What has shifted is emphasis: the claims that got him prosecuted, that the sun is a white-hot stone larger than the Peloponnese and that the moon shines by reflected light, are now the first thing usually said about him, where Aiton's 1910 entry mentions only "comets" and "other natural phenomena." Historians also still argue over whether the trial happened at all in the form Athenian tradition reports, since the story reaches us only through much later writers with a taste for philosopher-martyrs. Calling his theory of "seeds" an anticipation of panspermia is a modern gloss rather than his own idea, and should be read loosely.
Written for this edition, 2026.