Quotes About Democritus

In answer to Zeno, Democritus held that whilst atoms could be geometrically divided, it is only matter containing spaces – literally, parts of the void between the atoms – that can be physically divided. An atom itself could not be physically divided since it is perfectly solid, completely excluding the void, and thereby indivisible.

Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) suggested that the individual just needed tranquillity and peace of mind to be happy. As a follower of Democritus, he maintained that death was nothing to fear – it was simply the inevitable melting of our souls and bodies into atoms.

We will have to abandon the philosophy of Democritus and the concept of elementary particles. We should accept instead the concept of elementary symmetries.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell said that philosophy went downhill after Democritus and did not recover until the Renaissance.

Was it not Democritus of your own country who said, 'Well-ordered behavior consists in obedience to the law, the ruler, and the woman wiser than oneself'? Although in the text I read the words were written as, 'the man wiser,' but I can only suppose the scribe wrote the word wrong or meant it to be 'Elder.

Abderian laughter. Inhabitants of ancient Abdera were known as rural simpletons who foolishly derided people and things they didn't understand. Thus these Thracians saw their name become a synonym for foolish, scoffing laughter or mockery. Though proverbially known for their stupidity, the Abderites included some of the wisest men in Greece, Democritus and Protagoras among them.

Democrtitus, in the fifth century B.C. had declared that all the world was composed of only two elements: atomes and the void. This reduction of the myriad of forms to only two was the ultimate in dualistic reasoning. Christianity adopted dualism when it created the strict division between good and evil and heaven and hell.

Chemistry is the science of atoms. Elaborating on Democritus' idea, chemists learn how atoms stick or don't stick together, thus forming molecules.

Two of Epicurus's early influences, Democritus and Pyrrho, had actually journeyed all the way to what is now India, where they had encountered Buddhism in the schools of the gymnosophists

Democritus is studying philosophy here at Athens. This means that he delights in quarrels.

Epicurus was a materialist, but not a determinist. He followed Democritus in believing that the world consists of atoms and the void; but he did not believe, as Democritus did, that the atoms are at all times completely controlled by natural laws.

But of one thing I am satisfied, that the reason for which a vacuum was introduced by Leucippus and Democritus (namely, that without it the same bodies could not embrace and fill sometimes larger and sometimes smaller spaces) is a false one. For matter is clearly capable of folding and unfolding itself in space, within certain limits, without the interposition of a vacuum; nor is there in air two thousand times as much of vacuity as there is in gold.

And were the vision of Democritus to have been adopted by Western civilization, instead of being cast aside for the pale views of Plato and Aristotle, we would be vastly further ahead today, in

Democritus wrote books on ethics, natural science, mathematics, and music, of which many fragments survive. One of these fragments expresses the view that all matter consists of tiny indivisible particles called atoms (from the Greek for "uncuttable"), moving in empty space: "Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality.

There is a feeling of deep universalism, in the wake of the splendid words of Democritus: "To a wise man, the whole earth is open, because the true country of a virtuous soul is the entire universe.

Empowered by new conceptual tools and by mathematics, Einstein writes the equations which describe Democritus's void and finds for its 'certain physics' a colourful and amazing world where universes explode, space collapses into bottomless holes, time slows down in the vicinity of a planet, and the boundless expanses of interstellar space ripple and sway like the surface of the sea

An idea was needed, a great idea, a grand vision, to grasp the hidden order of the world. Leucippus and Democritus came up with this idea. The idea of Democritus's system is extremely simple: the entire universe is made up of a boundless space in which innumerable atoms run. Space is without limits; has neither an above nor a below; is without a center or a boundary. Atoms have no qualities at all, apart from their shape. They

Democritus himself, who had placed empty space at the basis of his world where atoms course, certainly wasn't crystal clear on the issue: he wrote that empty space is something "between being and non-being":

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody—not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms—had the smallest idea what was going on.

One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody - not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms - had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge ( as well as for comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs.)

Paucis notus, paucioribus ignotus, Hic jacet Democritus Junior, Cui vitam dedit et mortem Melancholia Known to few, unknown to even fewer, Here lies Democritus Junior, To whom Melancholia Gave life and death.

Thus Democritus and Epicurus, [16] who maintained that everything throughout infinity suffereth renewal and restoration, understood these matters more truly than those who would at all costs maintain belief in the immutability of the universe, alleging a constant and unchanging number of particles of identical material that perpetually undergo transformation, one into another.

It was not just Critias, the author of the Sisyphus fragment, who reacted to the atheist revolution. Already, in the 420s, in the glow of the sophistic movement, tragedies and comedies began to explore the question of whether gods exist. The ideas canvassed by Protagoras, Democritus, and Prodicus reached a broad audience thanks to the theater.

There is no such thing as an indestructible material object. Every particle that meets its antiparticle gives up its identity and becomes radiative energy. In the process, the energy is conserved, but the structure of the particle-be it Democritus's sphere or a die, be it charged or neutral-vanishes. It dissolves into pure energy. All identity is absorbed in the sea of pure energy.