The Theories Of Atomism And The Macroscopic World

Atomism originated in the school of Leucippus, which was located in Abdera, Thrace, by none other than Leucippus himself. However, the biggest flag bearer for this particular philosophy was Democritus, a student who was taught directly by Leucippus, who worked closely with Leucippus on the theories behind atomism. Democritus took the workings of his teacher and popularizing them, taking the ideas of atomism and put them into the philosophical sphere to be picked over by other great minds such as Plato and his followers,, and many others throughout the ages. The two basic ideas of atomism are the atom, a word which comes from the Greek word “atomos” meaning uncuttable. All atoms are uniform in size and form with no fluctuating properties. The second tenant of atomism is known as the void which, as the name suggests, is the lack of any matter and is the emptiness

These two facts, the fact that atoms do not fuse and the fact that everything in the macroscopic world is made up of clusters of atoms, means that everything in the macroscopic world is subject to change depending on the results of the the collisions between the atoms within a macroscopic cluster. Democritus also stated that each individual atom will persist eternally and remain unchanged, but its macroscopic form is subject to change at anytime during that eternity. It is utilizing these ideas that atomism was able to challenge a couple theories of the day. The first theory that was challenged by atomism was a theory from the philosopher Parmenides who had argued that for something to have a change something must come out of nothing because changed peice was not there to beginning so something must have been made out of nothing. Atomism challenged this idea by stating that that atoms are always present, however, depending on their interaction within the cluster they can change their macroscopic appearance and properties. The idea challenged by