suggested Anaximenes believed there was an overarching principle that regulated all life and behaviour. Interestingly, the Old Testament features a similar analogy to the founding of the world and creation of man, but Anaximenes did not recognize a creator of the universe and did not think of the pneuma as a creator to guide man. Condensation and rarefaction The choice of air may seem arbitrary, but Anaximenes based his conclusion on naturally observable phenomena in the water cycle, and the processes of rarefaction and condensation. The primary difference in the forms of air as matter was the degree of condensation and density. When air condenses it becomes visible, and according to Anaximenes, the spread-out, invisible, infinite air was condensed to wind, then formed into clouds, which condensed further to produce mist, rain, and other forms of precipitation. As the condensed air cooled, Anaximenes supposed that Earth itself was an early condensate of air—the process continued until the air was condensed enough to form solids like the Earth and ultimately stones. By contrast, Anaximenes was able to visually see how water evaporates into air and based his concept of rarefaction on this observation. According to him, any object that held light was made of fire, and fire was made from the rarefaction of air. While other philosophers also recognized such transitions in states of matter, Anaximenes was the first to associate the qualitative change in hot/dry and cold/wet pairings with the density of a single material, effectively adding a quantitative dimension to the Milesian monistic system. He attributed condensation to cold/wet air and rarefaction to the interaction of hot/dry air. Cosmology Having concluded that everything in the world is composed of air, Anaximenes used his theory to devise a scheme that explains the origins and nature of the earth and the surrounding celestial bodies. Air felted to create the flat disk of the earth, which he said was table-like and behaved like a leaf floating on air. Anaximenes did not think that stars were floating leaf-like bodies similar to the earth and sun; instead, he thought of stars being similar to nails that are stuck in a transparent shell. In keeping with the prevailing view of celestial bodies as balls of fire in the sky, Anaximenes proposed that the earth let out an exhalation of air that rarefied, ignited and became the stars. While the sun is similarly described as being