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The 20th-century classicist Cyril Bailey proposed another system to differentiate the two philosophers, attributing atomism and belief in the void to Leucippus while attributing The Great Cosmology to Democritus as an application of Leucippus's philosophy. [82] Unlike Democritus, Leucippus is only known to have studied cosmology and physics. [65]
Democritus (/ d ɪ ˈ m ɒ k r ɪ t ə s /, dim-OCK-rit-əs; Greek: Δημόκριτος, Dēmókritos, meaning "chosen of the people"; c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was an Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. [2] Democritus wrote extensively on a wide ...
The possibility of a vacuum was accepted—or rejected—together with atoms and atomism, for the vacuum was part of that same theory. Democritus and Lucretius denied the impossibility of a vacuum, being of the opinion that there must be a vacuum between the discrete particles (atoms) of which, they thought, all matter is composed.
Leucippus's ideas were influential in ancient and Renaissance philosophy. They were a precursor to modern atomic theory, but the two are only superficially similar. Leucippus's atoms come in infinitely many forms, all in constant motion, creating a deterministic world created by the collisions of atoms. The soul is viewed as an arrangement of ...
The modern concept of molecules can be traced back towards pre-scientific and Greek philosophers such as Leucippus and Democritus who argued that all the universe is composed of atoms and voids. Circa 450 BC Empedocles imagined fundamental elements ( fire ( ), earth ( ), air ( ), and water ( )) and "forces" of attraction and repulsion allowing ...
Democritus by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1628. Democritus was known as the "laughing philosopher" [114] Leucippus and Democritus both lived in Abdera, in Thrace. They are most famous for their atomic cosmology even though their thought included many other fields of philosophy, such as ethics, mathematics, aesthetics, politics, and even embryology ...
Democritus, and later philosophers—most notably Leucippus—proposed that the universe is composed of indivisible atoms moving through a void , although Aristotle did not believe that to be feasible because air, like water, offers resistance to motion. Air will immediately rush in to fill a void, and moreover, without resistance, it would do ...
Progression of atomic theory. Democritus, the originator of atomic theory, held that everything is composed of atoms that are indestructible. His claim that atoms are indestructible is not the reason it is superseded—as it was later scientists who identified the concept of atoms with particles, which later science showed are destructible.