Greece & Rome · c. 440–370 BCE
Atomism
Reality is nothing but indivisible bodies moving in empty space; everything we perceive arises from their shapes, positions and arrangements.
What must exist for motion and change to be possible?
Leucippus and Democritus of Abdera took up the Eleatic challenge directly. Parmenides had denied empty space and therefore motion; the atomists accepted his logic about being but boldly asserted that “what is not”, the void, exists too.
If matter could be divided forever, it would dissolve into nothing, so there must be uncuttable (atomos) units, each as changeless as Parmenides’ being. If there is void between them, they can move, collide and combine. Colours and tastes exist “by convention”; “in reality there are atoms and void”.
- Only atoms and void are real.
- Everything happens by necessity, without design.
- Sense qualities such as colour exist by convention.
Revived by Epicurus and Lucretius, and again by Gassendi and Boyle in the 17th century, it became the template for mechanistic science.
Thinkers
5th c. BCELeucippusFounder of atomism, about whom almost nothing is knownc. 460–370 BCEDemocritusThe “laughing philosopher” of Abdera, who developed atomismKey texts
Where it came from
Reacted againstEleatic schoolThe atomists accepted that real being is uncreated and unchanging but, against Parmenides, asserted that empty space exists, which makes motion possible.Grew out of
PluralistsAtomism pushed the pluralists’ strategy, explaining change as the rearrangement of permanent units, to its limit: countless atoms differing only in shape, order and position.
What it led to
Carried on byEpicureanismEpicurus adopted Democritus’ atoms and void; later sources, chiefly Lucretius and Cicero, add that he gave atoms a slight “swerve” to make room for free choice.Carried on by
Pyrrhonism & Academic skepticismPyrrho’s teacher Anaxarchus came from the Democritean tradition, which had already stressed that the senses do not show things as they really are.Borrowed by
Kalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)Kalām’s world of indivisible atoms re-created by God at every instant echoes Greek atomism, though how the idea travelled is debated.