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Democritus atomic theory date4/6/2024 In a fragment from his lost work on Democritus, Aristotle explains the theory as follows: Chance collisions among atoms account for the world of sense experience, since the couplings of hooked atoms or atoms whose shape in some way fit that of others give rise to compound objects. The only other natural reality allowed by Leucippus and Democritus is an infinite void that separates each atom from the others and provides the empty space in which they all continuously move in all directions, often with a whirling motion, and bump into each other. Their different shapes are countless, ranging from the smooth, rounded atoms that compose water to the rough, jagged, and uneven ones out of which iron is made. Infinite in number, the atoms of Democritus differ from each other in three respects only: shape (as the letter ‘A’ differs from ‘N’), arrangement (as ‘AN’ differs from ‘NA’, and relative position (as ‘N’ is ‘Z’ turned on its side). (Note that this last characteristic distinguishes ancient Greek atoms from the splittable ones of modern physics.) This material was the atom-from the Greek word atomon, meaning “indivisible.” Each atom is ungenerated, uniform, unalterable, and incapable of any further division. The main features of this theory are direct responses to the demand for an eternally changeless reality offered by Parmenides and like the answer of the Pluralists, the Atomists too adopted an Eleatic description of their fundamental substance. In what remains of his writings on physics or natural science, the atomic theory that Leucippus proposed and Democritus further developed marks a highpoint in ancient speculation. In turn, the list of works attributed to Democritus runs to more than seventy titles, and includes studies on such diverse subjects as mathematics, farming, medicine, grammar, ethics, and literature. It is through his pupil that Leucippus’s revolutionary insights into the world of nature have mainly been preserved. Little is known about his life, except that he lived around 430 b.c.e., wrote two books (On Mind and The Great World System), and was the teacher of the famous Democritus of Abdera. Certainly the most original fifth-century contribution to the debate on the nature of change was that of Leucippus (Leukippos) of Miletus. TESTIMONIALS FROM THE TEMPLE OF ASCLEPIUS AT EPIDAURUS
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