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Democritus,
Greek philosopher Born: Abdera, Thrace, about 470 B.C. Died: Greece, about 380 B.C. | |||||||||
Aristotle Democritus Descartes Plato Pythagoras Socrates |
Like Pythagoras before him, Democritus travelled widely in Egypt and the East, before returning to Greece to teach philosophy. He was often criticized by his contemporaries, and became widely known as the Laughing Philosopher. Democritus is best known for his theory that all matter is composed of tiny particles, so small that nothing smaller was possible. He called them atoms, a word which means "indivisible", and maintaining that there was a void between the atoms. Apparent changes in the nature of substances consisted merely of the re-arrangement of patterns of atoms, according to Democritus. He taught that the motions and behaviours of atoms were created by definite and unbreakable laws of nature, and had nothing to do with the superstitious whims of gods or demons. To Democritus, the creation of the universe was the result of the swirling motions of a great deal of atoms, that clustered together to form worlds. He obviously had no proof of this, and his conclusions were, as far as we know, born entirely of introspection and intuition. His atomic theory was long forgotten, until revived in the modern age, by Dalton. | |||||||||
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