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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 work of Democritus survives only in secondhand reports, some of which are unreliable or conflicting. Much of the best evidence of Democritus' theory of atomism is reported by Aristotle (384–322 BCE) in his discussions of Democritus' and Plato's contrasting views on the types of indivisibles composing the natural world. [16]
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 ...
Leucippus's The Great World System has sometimes been attributed to Democritus, which may have been an effect of Democritus including it among his corpus as the foundation of his work.[22] Leucippus's atomism was a direct response to Eleatic philosophy.[30][31] The Eleatics believed that nothingness, or the void, cannot exist in its own right.
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 ...
Leucippus, went on to develop the theory of atomism – the idea that everything is composed entirely of various imperishable, indivisible elements called atoms. This was elaborated in great detail by Democritus. [a] Similar atomist ideas emerged independently among ancient Indian philosophers of the Nyaya, Vaisesika and Buddhist schools. [11]
The origin of the idea in the Western tradition can be traced to the 5th century BCE starting with the Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus and his teacher Leucippus, who theorized matter's divisibility beyond what can be perceived by the senses until ultimately ending at an indivisible atom.