Atomism in its Ancient Greek Perspective

Abstract

Atomism was by no means the only account of the ultimate structure of matter put forward by the Ancient Greeks. One alternative, that of Aristotle, was the one that eventually won general support in the ensuing centuries leading up to the Scientific Revolution. Aristotle introduced form as a basic constituent of the world in addition to matter, and fashioned a notion of potential in addition to actual being which enabled him to overcome Parmenides’ denial of change in a way that differed markedly from that of the atomists. The importance of the innovations of the Greeks for a history of atomism is not confined to their attempts to give accounts of the ultimate structure of matter. They developed knowledge that was much closer to experience, especially in medicine, biology and astronomy as well as in mathematics. Aristotle himself made contributions of that kind as exemplified in his classification of animals based on careful observations of their characteristics and his pioneering attempt to give a theory of the continuum. In his work there were a variety of suggestions that gross properties of substances are due to some underlying granular structure. These were destined to prove more significant as far as the path to atomic theories of the seventeenth century are concerned than the speculations of Democritus and Epicurus.