born in modern Turkey. He developed a cosmogony in which universes come into existence from an ageless and eternal reservoir, into which they are eventually reabsorbed. In our universe rotation has put heavy material at the centre (the Earth) and fire at the periphery (the stars). The significance of this world-view is its all-embracing principle governing everything, which can be regarded as the first exposition of a universal law. Anaximander has wrongly been credited with discovering the equinoxes and the obliquity of the ecliptic.