The origin and development of the atomic theory

ATOMS NOT INFINITE IN VARIETY

Epicurus (341-270 B. C.) agreed with Democritus in assuming that the atoms are infinite in number, but he denied that they were infinitely various in shape, though their variety of form was conceded to be very great, some smooth and round—like the soul atoms and those of fire—some rough and pointed, others again branched or hooked. While the number of forms is limited, there is an unlimited number of each form. None of these variously formed atoms was ever created, and none can ever be either created or destroyed. “Out of nothing, nothing comes.”

MANY INHABITED WORLDS

Since space is infinite in extent and the atoms infinite in number as well as varied in shape and weights, there must also be innumerable inhabited worlds (as asserted by Democritus), displaying the greatest diversity; yet some of them may nevertheless be exactly alike, since like causes acting upon like bodies or complexes must inevitably produce like effects.

Metrodorus, of Chios, declared that “a single ear of corn on a wide-spreading champaign would not be more wonderful than a single cosmos in the infinitude of space.”

MAN’S GREATEST ENEMY

Study of Democritus convinced Epicurus that the greatest enemy of mankind is superstition, fear of imaginary gods and of punishment hereafter, making of man a mental slave. Epicurus was not a lover of science for science’s sake. He regarded its pursuit as having no greater justification than that through reasoning and observation it would free mankind from the fetters of supernaturalism, thus leaving an open road to peace and happiness. Pleasure is the highest good, and the highest form of pleasure is derived from cultivation of our mental faculties.

“Protected as it was by the emperors, the (Epicurean) school destroyed what remained of the crumbling edifice of polytheism, and at the same time attacked the new religion and the supernatural Christian.”[23]

ON THE GODS

In supporting his atomic theory of cosmology, biology and ethics, in refutation of the theological hypotheses of the Platonists and the Stoics, based, they claimed, upon “a study of nature and the laws of logic,” Epicurus offered what he regarded as logical evidence against the doctrine that the world was ever created or that it is the product of beneficent design. Professor Weber summed up the doctrine of Epicurus, as derived from the writings of the Poet, Lucretius; the biographer, Diogenes Laertius; and other authors of lives of the philosophers of ancient Greece, in the following words (translated by Dr. Frank Thilly, Professor of Philosophy in the University of Missouri):

“The absolute creation and absolute destruction of the world are [according to both Democritus and Epicurus] out of the question. Creation in the proper sense of the term is impossible. In order to convince ourselves that the world is not the work of the gods, we have simply to consider the nature of its alleged creators, on the one hand, and its imperfections, on the other. Why should such perfect and supremely happy beings, who are self-sufficient and have no need of anything, burden themselves with creating the world? Why should they undertake the difficult task of governing the universe?

“Let us, however, suppose for a moment that the world is their product. If they have created it, they have created it either eternally or in time; in the former case, the world is eternal; in the latter we have two possibilities: either creation is a condition of divine happiness, and then the gods were not supremely happy for an entire eternity, inasmuch as they did not create the world until after the lapse of an eternity of inaction; or, it is not, and in that case, they have acted contrary to their innermost essence. Moreover, what could have been their purpose in making it? Did they desire a habitation? That would be equivalent to saying that they had no dwelling-place for a whole eternity, or at least, none worthy of them. Did they create it for the sake of man? If they made it for the few sages whom the world contains, their work was not worth the trouble; if they did it in order to create wicked men, then they are cruel beings. Hence it is absolutely impossible to hold that creation is the work of the gods.

“Let us examine the matter from the stand-point of the world. How can we assume that a world full of evils is the creation of the gods? What have we? Barren deserts, arid mountains, deadly marshes, uninhabitable arctic zones, regions scorched by the southern sun, briars and thorns, tempests, hailstones and hurricanes, ferocious beasts, diseases, premature deaths; do they not all prove that the Deity has no hand in the government of things? Empty space, atoms and weight, in short, mechanical causes, suffice to explain the world; and it is not necessary for metaphysics to have recourse to the theory of final causes.”[24]

Just as astrologists blame the stars for the individual’s short-comings—while at the same time holding on to the doctrine of free will, by assuring us that “the stars incline but do not compel”—and credit the astral bodies for his good traits and successes, exactly so the ancient Greeks placed responsibility for man’s derelictions and misfortunes—as well as for his happy achievements—on the gods. Minerva’s influence endowed the individual with intelligence; Venus infused the passion of love; Apollo dispersed manly beauty, health and happiness; Mars involved peoples in wars; while Mercury was the god of mathematics, inventions, business transactions, etc. Without denying the existence of the gods, Epicurus, as we have seen, did seek to show that the Olympian divinities were not in any way concerned with terrestrial affairs.[25]

Though the gods are dead, we cannot yet say, with Henley,

For modern man has within his own physiological “world” real substitutes for the imaginary gods of Olympus, which really “incline” if they “do not compel,” “behavior.” While the gods have been all but forgotten, and the “fateful” stars have been reduced to vast incandescent masses of helium, hydrogen, calcium, iron, etc., the endocrine (ductless) glands still largely control or alter personality; though these bodies are but constellations of atomic systems, with electrons for sun and planets, each revolving in an all but inscrutable cosmos of its own.

These still mysterious glands are today the real “astral influences”—acting under “necessity”—which confer upon us manly beauty and intelligence, or, perhaps, a dwarfed body and an imbecilic brain. The pituitary body, originating tens of millions of years ago in the roof of the mouth of some lowly chordate (lancelet stage), in Cambrian times, and now attached to the base of man’s brain, has taken the place of Minerva and Apollo; the gonads and the thymus have absorbed the functions of Venus; the adrenals, the combative “influence” of Mars; while the thyroid makes of us—or “inclines” us to become—poets, radicals, “up-lifters,”—or maybe, mere lovers of the lime light![26]

Surely this character-building “by necessity” would have delighted the soul of Democritus and brought joy to the heart of his great disciple Epicurus, who introduced an element of chance into Atomism only to bridge what was to him an impassable gulf between the laws of mechanics and observed phenomena.

This insistence of the ancient Atomists on the necessity of attempting to account for all natural phenomena as the result of uniform, immutable, universal “necessity” or law is one of the greatest conceptions handed down to us from antiquity—a monument to the human mind equalled only by the attempt to correlate all qualitative differences of substances (atoms) with differences of size, shape and position in space (with relation to one another) and with movement.

Gompertz does not hesitate to declare that this grand work of the ancient Atomists “is destined to survive all changes of opinion and thought.” Furthermore, all exact knowledge of nature “rests entirely on this attempt to reduce qualities to quantities, or, to speak more precisely, to establish fixed relations between the two. Mathematical physics was contained there as in a germ, and modern research took its starting-point thence. Galileo, Descartes, Huygens,—they all followed the same path. ‘I do not believe,’ declared Galileo, ‘that anything else is required than magnitudes, shapes, quantities, and slow movements or swift, to produce in us tastes, smell, sounds.’”[27]