The ideas of the pre-Socratic philosophers are largely known to us by what is said of them by the post-Socratic thinkers, who wrote and were copied far more extensively. One nice feature of this book is Schofield's explanation of how and why philosophizing and writing in the Ionian tradition changed (essentially with Plato). The earlier philosophers generally produced in writing only a summation their evolved understanding of the world, as matured thinkers, rather than writing over the course of their lives. It is believed that Anaxagoras wrote his book, only a few fragments of which are now extant, in his mid thirties, at about the same time Socrates was born (469?BC). Aristotle, who went to war with the ideas of so many of the earlier philosophers, held an unusual respect for Anaxagoras.
The archaic sage was someone rather unlike the modern philosopher, but not necessarily in such a way that his thought was more crude or less defensible, he simply worked quite differently: ". . . by and large the Presocratics give the impression one would expect of thinkers who had to create their own audiences . . . without the aid of such institutions as the university or the publishing industry. . . If he took up the pen, then, he did so in a cultural setting and in a frame of mind quite different from those of his modern counterpart. Until the end of the fifth century [BC], when in Athens at least literacy became widespread and book production multiplied, no philosopher wrote more than one or two short treatises." p. 29 So it was that in Anaxagoras's day, a philosophical book presumably would "offer a final statement of it's author's doctrine, and indeed of the truth about the world." p. 30 Arguments and treatment of counterarguments had been given orally, contemporaneous thinkers had heard them, challenged them, discussed them -- the pen was for concluding dogmatic assertions. "[E]ven if Anaxagoras's book contained little in way of argument for it's basic themes, it need not follow that its author saw no need for such argument." It is better understood that "he writes like a man who has lived long with his thoughts and is so convinced of their truth and importance that he is prepared to sacrifice something of ready and precise intelligibility in the urgency of his attempt to communicate their essence." p. 32
Schofield brings his knowledge and speculations to bear on the fragments, but observes that, "books, as experience teaches and as Plato complained, seldom capture everything that is important in a man's philosophizing." p. 28 The interpretations of Anaxagoras by some later commentators are discussed and analyzed.

Treated first is that feature of Anaxagoras's thought which is perhaps best known, Fragment XII, his understanding of the primordial Mind. Schofield examines whether commentators are correct in understanding that this mind is intended to have a capital 'm' (that is, is the divine Mind) finding that this understanding is certainly the obvious one. But many of the statements can be applied to the individual human mind as well. It is a case less easily made, but Schofield treats this material as thoroughly as perhaps it should be. Chapter two looks at the first Fragment, and we find something sounding remotely like our present big bang cosmology (it is asserted that, at the origin of the world, all things were "together" and "unlimited" in "smallness"), but Anaxagoras's understanding was hardly ours, his intent seems to have been the rehabilitation and refinement of Anaximines's cosmology.

I terms of biography, not much can be said of Anaxagoras, although what can be said is quite interesting (biography is not important to Schofield's essay). A Greek of Asia Minor, it is said that he gave away his property and moved to Athens to pursue the science of contemplation. A charge of impiety -- he was accused of arguing contrary to Athenian polytheistic political theology, teaching that the sun was a celestial body of fire and not a deity -- forced him to leave Athens. His adversaries in Athens likely colored him as an atheist but his view is better understood as being among the first of the rational monotheists, although he was not specifically concerned with the idea of an incorporeal nature for the intelligent first cause. Later thinkers would be, Aristotle was certainly an heir to his line of causational and theological thought. For the philosophically fascinated, Schofield's book is an excellent examination of not only Anaxagoras's thought, but of the world of pre-Socratic ideas.