Anaximander in Context stands to become a very influential book. Most importantly, it allows Hahn to develop further his outstanding and original thesis introduced in Anaximander and the Architects: The Contributions of Egyptian and Greek Architectural Technologies to the Origins of Greek Philosophy. Hahn's thesis urged us to re-consider the importance of cultural context in the origins and early development of Greek philosophy, and in particular the technologies of monumental temple building to the technological elements in Anaximander's early philosophical speculations. Now, Hahn is joined by Naddaf and Couprie to press further the importance of "context" to unfold Anaximander's originality. All three monographs reflect upon the role that Egypt played, as part of the background, but each study reaches deeply into the Greek tradition from which Anaximander's originality emerged. While all three studies breathe a fresh air into a time-worn subject, Hahn's essay is both the boldest and yet most reasonable. The impact of monumental temple projects overwhelmed the archaic communities. A key theme of early Greek philosophy is the search for the "One over Many" and Hahn shows how modular construction of temples succeeded by adopting precisely this technique in building, and how Anaximander made use of this technique. Moreover, in a previously unexplored way, Hahn shows further how Anaximander's vision of the cosmos was "cosmic architecture." The architects wrote prose treatises on their works, presumably to show how to construct the house of the cosmic powers, while Anaximander was something of an architectural historian of the cosmos, explaining in his prose treatise(s) how the cosmic architecture came about, that is, the house that is the cosmos.

For anyone familiar with scholarship on ancient Greek philosophy, Hahn's Anaximander and the Architects is a breath of fresh air. So many of the old studies view the origins of philosophy as if they are exploring brains-in-a-jar, rather than individuals who are motivated and stimulated by practical problems to think abstractly. Hahn reminds us that short of war, monumental temple building was the most overwhelming project that was taken on by archaic Greek communities. The projects required a great variety of technological skills -- planning, quarrying, transporting, installing, and finishing the enormous stones; they demanded vast organization of resources and work forces. And we should not forget that the temples literally transformed the ancient landscapes, and thus affected the mentality of the people who dwelled in these communities. The projects in building gigantic temples offered to these early Greek communities a kind of experimental science; trial and error was displayed for the community like never before. In that cultural environment, the speculative thought of the natural philosophers has its origins. For those studying ancient Greek philosophy, this book is a must-read.

Robert Hahn starts out this intermittently interesting book with an outline of all the points that he's going to make, and then proceeds to repeat them so often over the rest of the book that one wonders if maybe the book would not have made a much more enjoyable magazine article, especially if he had stuck to his most interesting and compelling theme, which is that we should think of the earliest Ionian philosophers (Thales, Anaximander) as well rounded individuals who probably had a great deal of meaningful interaction with the earliest Ionian architects. That's all very well until we get to page 87, where Hahn introduces as plausible some truly whimsical hypotheses about the symbolism of the temple column to the ancient Greeks. Imagine, if you will, that "the columns had a nautical significance...like a double row of oars propelling a ship" or that "the columns...represent the upright loom; the temple like the loom is that central device by which the city weaves its socially consolidated fabric". There are no literary citations of any such metaphors offered (since I suspect none exist) to support the notion that the ancient Greeks actually thought this way. To propose such notions, while ignoring more commonly plausible theories (such as the evolution of the temple, which is a sacred place where rituals are performed, from the sacred groves of trees which are mentioned many times in ancient literature) suggests that the author is not taking the religious practices of the ancient Greeks seriously enough, seeing them only as political and social ceremonies.

On the other hand, the book has some delightful illustrations that reconstruct such interesting concepts as the early cosmogonies of Homer, Hesiod, and Anaximander, which earns it at least 2 stars.

Anaximander and the Architects is clearly the most important work on the origins of Greek philosophy in recent years. The traditional study of the Ionian philosophers has become stagnant. The limited information available from sources such as Aristotle and the surviving fragments has been largely exhausted. Professor Hahn taps a new source of information: archeology. In chapter one, Hahn outlines the competing theories, championed over the last century, and proposes a completely new approach. While he is not claiming to offer a new sufficient condition to explain why Greek philosophy began in eastern Greece, he shows how two of the much discussed hypotheses overlap in an original way: the development of the polis, whose democratic and legal practices nurtured a community open for rational debate, and the development of technologies associated with monumental temple building that opened a new vista for understanding nature's laws. Anaximander opened for his Greek community a rational debate over nature's laws. In chapter five, the last chapter, Hahn offers what professional philosophers refer to as a "Science Studies" approach to this historical episode: the social and political context in which western philosophy and science began. Along the way, Hahn explores the community of architects and early philosophers (chapter two) and the technological processes and products that consumed the temple architects (chapter three). In chapter four, Hahn shows how these technologies were adopted and adapted by Anaximander as he imagined "cosmic architecture." Hahn encourages the philosopher to leave his armchair, go outside, and get his hands dirty. He states his position clearly and supports it convincingly: philosophy did not originate in a vacuum, it had a mother and her name was Architecture. This book will change the course of this very old field of study.

While I am no expert in ancient philosophy, I confess to having read over the years several survey books on the subject. Never before had I seen so many diagrams and illustrations in a book on this topic. What Anaximander and the Architects does is to present a case about the origins of Greek philosophy by walking the reader through the powerful images that shaped Anaximander's world and his philosophizing. The more one thinks about, the more original is Hahn's argument: while early Greek philosophy is almost always marked by the literary evidence for "rationalizing the cosmos," explaining the origins of the universe without recourse to myth, Hahn offers us an argument to understand "rationalizing" by evidence from "images" and "pictures." By this approach, Hahn exposes the philosophical imagination of the early Greek philosophers. This approach is really new, and it asks us to think again -- as do some studies in cognitive science --about the role that the imagination plays in the development of rationality.