![]() ![]() And suppose we take a knife and cut the apple into two pieces. Suppose we have an apple, and suppose the apple's not made of atoms but is instead this continuous, hard stuff. Why does Democritus think there are these atoms surrounded by void? He gives a few arguments, one of which can be paraphrased as follows (following Carl Sagan). For if the atoms that made up the ocean were "intrinsically blue," then how could they form the white froth on waves? On the other hand, Democritus says that properties like color and taste are not intrinsic to atoms, but instead emerge out of the interactions of many atoms. They can have different sizes, weights, and shapes - maybe some are spheres, some are cylinders, whatever. These atoms can hit each other and bounce off, and they can stick together to make bigger things. So, what were the ideas they criticized? Democritus thought the whole universe is composed of atoms in a void, constantly moving around according to determinate, understandable laws. (Some of them apparently survived into the Middle Ages, but they're lost now.) What we know about him is mostly due to the fact that other philosophers, like Aristotle, brought him up in order to criticize him. That gives you a sense of how important he's considered: "Yeah, the pre-Socratics - maybe stick 'em in somewhere in the first week of class." (Incidentally, there's a story that Democritus journeyed to Athens to meet Socrates, but then was too shy to introduce himself.)Īlmost none of Democritus's writings survive. He's called a "pre-Socratic," even though actually he was a contemporary of Socrates. He was a disciple of Leucippus, according to my source, which is Wikipedia. where people from Athens said that even the air causes stupidity. He was born around 450BC in Abdera, which was sort of this podunk town. " First of all, who was Democritus? He was this ancient Greek dude. I just learned about Democritus from a wonderful book by Scott Aaronson called "Quantum Computing Since Democritus." Since I'm advertising his book, I guess he won't mind if I steal the following passage from his lecture notes (), which are much more fun than anything I write.
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