Because all phenomena are composed of the same eternal atoms, it may be said that nothing comes into being or perishes in the absolute sense of the words, although the compounds made out of the atoms are liable to increase and decrease, explaining a thing’s appearance and disappearance, or “birth” and “death.” Thus, the atoms of water and iron are the same, but those of water, being smooth and round and therefore unable to hook onto one another, roll over and over like small globes, whereas those of iron, being rough, jagged, and uneven, cling together and form a solid body. A thing is hot or cold, sweet or bitter, or hard or soft only by convention the only things that exist in reality are atoms and the Void. But, while atoms thus differ in quantity, differences of quality are only apparent, owing to the impressions caused on the senses by different configurations and combinations of atoms. These atoms are eternal and indivisible absolutely small, so small that their size cannot be diminished (hence the name atomon, or “indivisible”) absolutely full and incompressible, as they are without pores and entirely fill the space they occupy and homogeneous, differing only in shape, arrangement, position, and magnitude. He conceived of the Void as a vacuum, an infinite space in which moved an infinite number of atoms that made up Being (i.e., the physical world). To account for the world’s changing physical phenomena, Democritus asserted that space, or the Void, had an equal right with reality, or Being, to be considered existent. Democritus agreed with Parmenides.ĭemocritus’s physical and cosmological doctrines were an elaborated and systematized version of those of his teacher, Leucippus. …ancient philosophy was that of Democritus (5th century bce).
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