Democritus

is an early materialist who argued that there are only atoms and the void. At every moment planets are colliding and dying, and new worlds are rising out of chaos by the selective aggregation of atoms of similar size and shape. There is no design; the universe is a machine.

In reality, 55 said Democritus, there are only atoms and the void." Perception is due to the expulsion of atoms from the object upon the sense organ There is or have been or will be an infinite number of worlds; at every moment planets are colliding and dying, and new worlds are rising out of chaos by the selective aggregation of atoms of similar size and shape. There is no design; the universe is a machine.

is the original materialist thinker who argued that there is, in reality, nothing but atoms and space.

At first this philosophy was physical; it looked out upon the material world and asked what was the final and irreducible constituent of things. The natural termination of this line of thought was the materialism of Democritus— "in reality there is nothing but atoms and space.” l This was one of the main streams of Greek speculatiori; it passed underground for a time in Plato's day, but emerged in Epicurus (343MJ70), and became a torrent of eloquence in Lucretius (98-55 b. c.).

is wrong about there being a void : there can be no void or vacuum in nature, says Aristotle, for in a vacuum all bodies would fall with equal velocity; this being impossible, "the supposed void turns out to have nothing in it

One of the more lively passages is an attack on Democritus' "void": there can be no void or vacuum in nature, says Aristotle, for in a vacuum all bodies would fall with equal velocity; this being impossible, "the supposed void turns out to have nothing in it"—an instance at once of Aristotle's very occasional humor, his addiction to unproved assumptions, and his tendency to disparage his predecessors in philosophy.

Democritus, n.All

Democritus