Atoms
Two Greek thinkers propose that matter is made of indivisible particles moving in void.
- When
- Known to
- ± 20 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
Leucippus and Democritus argue around 420 BCE that everything consists of atoms — uncuttable particles differing in shape and size — moving in empty space, and that all apparent qualities arise from their arrangement. There is no experimental basis; it is a solution to a logical problem about divisibility. Aristotle rejects it and it survives mainly through Epicurus and Lucretius, to be picked up again two thousand years later.