Leucippus

The atomists, for example, Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus, thought that a phenomenon could be explained when its individual elements were known in contrast, Aristotle was of the opinion that that was not enough, since such information refers only to the material basis. In order to be able to understand things and processes, three further origins , principles and reasons must be known. 

Interestingly, the teachings of Democritus (460-37Ibc) did not become so important, although in the sense of natural science (as we now know it), they were much more relevant. Leucippus was Democritus s teacher, and thus the scholar took over the basic ideas of atomic theory from his teacher atoms as tiny particles, too tiny to be visible, which were everlasting and could not be destroyed. They were supposedly made from the same material, but were of different sizes and weights. According to Democritus, life arises from a process in which the small particles of the moist earth combine with the atoms of fire. 

Such a hydrodynamic explanation of matter—which dispensed with the assumption, going back at least as far as Leucippus and Democritus, that atoms were impenetrable hard particles of matter—was tantalizing for Victorian... 

Leucippus, asked what would happen if you cut a block of silver in half, then cut the half in half, and just kept doing this.They thought that eventually you would get to the smallest particle of silver, which couldn t be cut anymore, and they called those particles atoms. Atom is Greek for something that cannot be divided.They also said that those atoms are always moving, and because they need space to move in, there must also be empty space, or a void. So far, so good. But according to Democritus and Leucippus, there was an infinite variety of atoms, so a tree was made of completely different stuff than air. 

The earliest concept of atomic structure dates back to Greece in the fifth century bce, when Leucippus and Democritus postulated that tiny particles of matter, which they called atomos, were indivisible. 

The atomists led by Leucippus and Democritus explained chemical combination by proposing that atoms consisted of various shapes, which contained projections. Different-shaped atoms interlocked like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle or atoms with... 

Leucippus of Miletus (fifth century bc) is generally credited with introducing the concept of atoms, but we know little more about... 

In contrast to Eleatic School (Parmerrides and Empedocles), Leucippus of Miletus (-500- BCE) and his pupil, Democritus of Abdera (460-370 BCE) introduced the void as being necessary for the motion of corprrscrrles or atoms. Atoms are indivisible, solid, full, and compact with various shapes. They also were in motion and have weight (20). 

To Leucippus and Democritus the Greeks and the Western world are indebted for the first clearly defined atomic theory of matter. Leucippus was the teacher of Democritus,... 

While he was interpreting this physical phenomenon of the diffusion of gases, a little word began to loom larger and clearer m his mind. He had come across that word in his readings. Kanada, the Hindu atom eater," had centuries ago conceived matter to be discontinuous and made up of small eternal particles in perpetual motion. Leucippus, a famous scholar and teacher of Greece, had also speculated on the... 

This concept [matter] has hardly changed from the times of Leucippus to the beginning of the twentieth century an impenetrable something, which fills completely certain regions of space and which persists through time even when it changes its location. 

In the past 200 years a great deal of experimental evidence has accumulated to support the atomic model. This theory has proved to be both extremely useful and physically reasonable. When atoms were first suggested by the Greek philosophers Democritus and Leucippus about 400 B.c., the concept was based mostly on intuition. In fact, for the following 20 centuries, no convincing experimental evidence was available to support the existence of atoms. The first real scientific data were gathered by Lavoisier and others from quantitative measurements of chemical reactions. The results of these stoichiometric experiments led John Dalton to propose the first systematic atomic theory. Dalton s theory, although crude, has stood the test of time extremely well. 

The idea that the elements were uniform and indivisible bodies (as opposed to an undifferentiated mass) can be traced to Leucippus of Miletus, who lived around 420 b.c.e. While the details of Leucippus s life are fragmentary, he was probably the first true atomist, arguing that there were only two aspects of the universe matter and the void. Matter was made of atoms, which were individually imperceptible, but solid and came in a finite number of shapes. By combining the basic shapes, all common matter could be constructed. Atoms also had the property of motion. This was a necessary aspect of atoms, since the void, being nothing, could not move, so the ability to move had to be inherent or part of the nature of matter. 

Atomism s rise, thanks to Dalton s resurrection of some ancient ideas of Democritus and Leucippus, has made atomists of all of us. However, Paul Needham (Chapter 3) makes clear that this conversion has been neither complete nor uncontested. Alternative approaches, most especially Aristotle s, remain embedded in contemporary chemical theory. Perhaps, the central theoretical problem that chemistry poses... 

In the course of spelling out the problem which the theory of substance should address, Aristotle considers various theories of his predecessors. The atomic theory of Leucippus and Democritus is singled out as of particular merit ... 

The ancient Greek philosophers Leucippus and Democritus beheved that atoms existed, but they had no idea as to their nature. Centuries later, in 1803, the English chemist John Dalton, guided by the experimental fact that chemical elements cannot be decomposed chemically, was led to formulate his atomic theory. Dalton s atomic theory was based on the assumption that atoms are tiny indivisible entities, with each chemical element consisting of its own characteristic atoms. ... 

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