  It seems clear that if nous is to have all discernment and to order the cosmos, it must have some knowledge of the contents of the original mixture (Lesher 1995, Curd 2004). Further, if the ingredients are fundamentally real things they must have stable and knowable natures. (This follows from Parmenides’ arguments about the connection between what-is and what is knowable.) Thus, there is a match between the natures of the ingredients and the cognitive power of cosmic nous, but Anaxagoras leaves the mechanism unexplained. It seems likely that cosmic nous just has a direct intellectual grasp of these nature and acts in accordance with that knowledge.