Democritus

Democritus proposed the idea that matter is formed of small pieces that couldn't be cut into smaller pieces. He called the pieces atomos, we call them atoms. Democritus, like all Greek Philosophers, only did thought experiments so he had no evidence to support his idea.

Reading: Democritus, a Greek philosopher of 430 B.C., theorized that the natural world is made up of two fundamentally opposite things, these being tiny indivisible particles – atoms – and void. Democritus described the void as being simply nothing or the opposite of particles. His idea was that matter consisted of small pieces that could not be cut into smaller parts. Democritus thought that atoms by their nature were unchangeable; they can only move about in the void and combine into different clusters. He thought that all objects are subject to change since atoms can shift and move around. In other words atoms will persist through all of time but everything else is temporary and subject to breaking down. Democritus called these small pieces “atomos” which means “uncuttable” and from this term we get the word atom. Greek philosophers, including Democritus, didn’t do experiments, so they didn’t prove the existence of atoms.

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