When and Where did the Atomic Theory Come From?

[Rhondazvous]

Yes, it is a pretty big gap. I'm not sure how much of it's due to the massive gaps in the historical record that are pretty much part and parcel for the Pre-Socratics and how much of it's due to their thought really being that out there (what with Parmenides denying motion).

The best I've been able to figure out was that the atoms were the unchanging things that remained while their formation changed (taking a strangely Avogadro-type attitude about how they grouped together by default). This may be a good place to start. Maybe the old analogy about cutting an apple until we're only left with a slice so thin there's nothing left to cut was original to Leucippus and Democritus, but I can't find any evidence of it being mentioned before the 1900s (though I could be wrong).

And now I find myself curious about this novel. My guess from what info you gave is that it's either a novel about the development of atomic philosophy and theory, or something that does for physics or chemistry what Sophie's World does for philosophy. Will your discussions on atomism stick with the traditional Europeans or are you considering a digression into Kanada's Vaisesika Sutra?

The article is beyond intriguing in and of itself. Thanks Rye.

This atomist natural philosophy eschewed teleological explanation and denied divine intervention or design, regarding every composite of atoms as produced purely by material interactions of bodies

This is the evolution of the material universe 2300 years before Darwin! Can you imagine where humanity would be now if we hadn’t allowed the Church to smother all of Europe in philosophical hemlock? Einstein could have been born thousands of years ago. We’d be teaching the grand unified theory in high school science class.

I’m on pins and needles thinking of how atomism can be applied to time.

I will use this information to flesh out the characters in a fiction novel. For instance, in Queen of the Quantum Realm, I have a renegade positron who loves other positrons. He gathers a flock of lost and rejected positrons and tells them he is their prophesied savior.

The details of how I will use the information in the novel about atoms is still inchoate, but you have helped me already. I’m thinking I could probably use Zeno of Elea. I might also find something useful in the Vaisesika Sutra.